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University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office

Adrian Wilson
PRINTING AND BOOK DESIGNING

An Interview Conducted by
Ruth Teiser

Berkeley
1966 '

Adrian Wilson at 3^3 Front St., 1954

Photograph by Ruth Teiser
Reproduction rights reserved

•

S.F. CHRONICLE
Thursday, February 4, 1988

OBITUARIES

Adrian Wilson
— Renowned
S.F. Printer

Adrian Wilson, internation
ally known fine printer, typog
rapher and teacher, died yester
day at Pacific Medical Center
while awaiting a heart donor.
He was 64.

In 1983, Mr. Wilson was award
ed a $280,000 MacArthur Prize. He
was the first San Franciscan to win
the prestigious award.

Mr. Wilson, who arrived in San
Francisco in 1946 after serving
three years in civilian service as a
conscientious objector during
World War II, operated his business,
called Press in Tuscany Alley, on
Telegraph Hill.

He was called "perhaps Ameri
ca's most distinguished fine press
printer and book designer" by Pa
tricia Holt, The Chronicle's book ed
itor.

She added, in a 1985 story, that
"His work for university presses
and museums, his scholarly re
search of medieval manuscripts, his
classes in library science and the
history of the book at the University
of California at Berkeley and most
of all his adventurous and highly
individualistic use of type and block
illustration in the design of his own
work have brought him unparallel
ed stature."

A native of Ann Arbor, Mich.,
Mr. Wilson studied at Wesleyan Uni
versity before becoming a conscien
tious objector and being drafted in
to civilian public service.

He spent time in a camp in
Waldport, Ore., where he learned
printing.

He and his wife, Joyce Lancas
ter, founded a San Francisco theat
rical group, The Interplayers, for
which he printed programs.

A book of his theater programs
is considered a treasure. He also

ADRIAN WILSON
Winner of a MacArthur Prize

turned out such works as "Art of
Andrew Wyeth," "Ansel Adams: Im
ages" and, in 1983, an autobiogra
phy of his work, "The Work & Play
of Adrian Wilson."

Mr. Wilson won the MacArthur
Prize while he was recovering from
having a pacemaker inserted in his
heart. He later invited 200 friends
from around the country to a party
at the Academy of Art College in
downtown San Francisco.

Mr. Wilson is survived by his
wife and their daughter, Melissa W.
Marshall.

There will be private services,
and a memorial service is being
planned.

Donations are preferred to the
Department of Cardiology, Pacific
Presbyterian Medical Foundation,
2340 Clay Street, Suite 425, San
Francisco 94115.

Gleason Library Associates, Newsletter Number 8, Spring 1988

ADRIAN WILSON

by Andrew Hoyem

Adrian Wilson, 1954. Photograph by Ruth Teiser

Andrew Hoyem, director of the Arion Press, has been a San
Francisco printer of increasing importance since shortly after
World War II. He has written this account of his friend and
fellow-printer, Adrian Wilson, for the Newsletter.

Adrian Wilson, a highly regarded and well-loved
member of the San Francisco book community
who enjoyed an international reputation, died
on February 4, 1988, at the age of 64.
He was a typographic designer who had
designs on every aspect of the work before him, whether
it be a program for a play, a label on a spice bottle, or a
book of nature photographs. Early in his career he became
known for an exuberant style that pleased an admiring public.
His colorful arrangements of type (Bruce Rogers' Centaur
was his favorite) combined with attractive illustrative and
decorative elements in a manner that was modern yet
humane. Wilson was an altruist who applied his refined taste
to mean and exalted subjects, in jobs and commissions
accepted, follies indulged, or publishing ventures sponsored
on his own.

Adrian was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and studied at
Wesleyan University before the Second World War, when
as a conscientious objector he was sent to a camp in
Waldport, Oregon. There he met the poet William Everson
and learned to print. In 1946 he came to San Francisco. In
those early days he joined forces with Jack Stauffacher to
offer services of fine printing. The young designer and his
wife, the actress Joyce Lancaster, were founding members
of a theatrical group, the Interplayers. The playbills he pro
duced for the company were used for his publication, Prin
ting for TTieater, a volume now much sought after by
collectors.

Joyce and Adrian collaborated on several projects, resear
ching, writing and designing such scholarly treatises on the
history of printing as The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle
and A Medieval Mirror. He designed books for the University

of California Press and for other University and trade
publishers. Among the outstanding are Ansel Adams: Images
and The Art of Andrew Wyeth. For the Book Club of
California he printed several editions at his Press in Tuscany
Alley, the address of his studio and home.

In 1983 Adrian Wilson became the first San Franciscan
to be named a Mac Arthur Prize Fellow, which allowed him
time to pursue his work as a craftsman, typographer, and
scholar. Although weakened by a heart condition for many
years, he was unfailingly cheerful, optimistic, and seemingly
tireless at his profession and in the activities of bibliophilic
societies of the Bay Area. He was a Fellow of the Gleeson
Library Associates. Adrian was an amiable man, generous
with his time and advice to younger aspiring craftsmen and
women. Many of his former apprenctices are now active in
the fields of fine printing and graphic design. The Design
of books, published in 1967, continues to be widely used by
students and professionals alike.

When I last spoke with him, by telephone to his hospital
bed, Adrian's warmth and sense of humor were
undiminished. I told him that Arion Press was beginning the
printing of James Joyce's Ulysses, and he replied that he had
read that immense novel while walking on a treadmill. That
was back in the forties, he said, while he was serving out
his term of alternate service as a conscientious objector and
had been assigned to a medical experiment. First, he and
his fellows in the test were placed on a moving belt and walk
ed for weeks. Then the subjects were put to bed in a hospital
to rest for an equivalent period. The object of the study was
to determine the difference in muscle tone between the ac
tive, exercising body and the same person in the passive
mode. He reckoned that he was being put through the se
cond half of the experiment a second time and would prefer
reading while walking to reading in bed.

I'd call Adrian Wilson a conscientious affirmator. Cer
tainly the graphic evidence in his autobiography, The Work
and Play of Adrian Wilson, testifies to a life of joyful creative
expression.

All uses of this manuscript are covered by an agreement
between the Regents of the University of California and
Adrian Wilson, dated 21 December 1965. The manuscript
is thereby made available for research purposes. All
literary rights in the manuscript, including the right
to publish, are reserved to Adrian Wilson until December
31, 1999, or during his lifetime, whichever is later.
No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication
without the written permission of the Director of The
Bancroft Library of the University of California at
Berkeley.

INTRODUCTION

Adrian Wilson came to prominence as a printer in the
busy, creative San Francisco of the post-war 1940's. His
programs for the theater group, The Interplayers, brought
him attention and acclaim* The books of poetry which
followed, and his own work Printing for Theater, established
him as a talented designer of fine printing.

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1923, Mr. Wilson first
came to the West Coast during World War II. A pacifist, he
was sent to a conscientious objectors' "fine arts" camp at
Waldport, Oregon. There he took a hand in printing the
camp's literary publications, and there he participated in
theatrical productions. Following the war, he and his wife,
actress Joyce Lancaster, came to San Francisco as members of
the group which established The Interplayers. They have
continued to live in the city. Wilson, who became a practical
printer not through the traditional apprenticeship but largely
through informal and self training, has in recent years de
voted his major efforts to the designing of printing.

At the time of the interview, Mr. Wilson had been working
independently for several years, in a studio in his home at
1 Tuscany Alley. The interview was conducted in one late

morning session on October 6, 1965» In the living room of
the Wilsons' pleasantly sequestered home In the center of
a block low In the western slope of Telegraph Hill.
Mr. Wilson expresses himself easily* Having thought out
the material for the Interview In advance, he presented his
recollections unhurriedly but directly and expedltlously.
The Regional Oral History Office was established to
tape record autobiographical Interviews with persons prom
inent in recent California history a The Office is under
the direction of Mrs. Wllla Baum, and under the administra
tive supervision of the Director of The Bancroft Library.
Past interviews by the Office which may supplement the
material covered in this interview have been done with
Brother Antoninus, Warren Howell, Albert Sperlsen, Edward
deWitt Taylor, and Jane Grabhorn, and others are underway
in the fields of literature, publishing, and printing.

Ruth Telser
Interviewer

10 May 1966

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, AND YOUTH 1

A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR IN WORLD WAR II 9

EARLY INTEREST IN THEATER 19

THE INTERPLAYERS AND PRINTING— BEGINNING 28

FIRST BOOKS 38

GREENWOOD PRESS 41

PRINTING AND THE INTERPLAYERS --MATURITY 51

PRINTING AT 343 FRONT 63

UNIVERSITY PRESS 69

EUROPE 75

DESIGNING AND PRINTING AT TUSCANY ALLEY 81

"FINE PRINTERS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1934,"
(Lecture delivered September 14, 1965 at the

University of California, Berkeley) 88

PARTIAL INDEX 102

•

...

FAMILY, CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Interview - October 6, 1965

Wilson: My father's name was Adrian Peter Wezel. It waa a

name that was a curse in Holland because they always
made of it Ezel, which means donkey. In this country
it became Weasel, which is even worse, (Laughter)
So all through my boyhood we Buffered with this name.
It got to the point when I went to high school that
my family changed it.

Teiaer: Was your father born in Holland?

Wilson: Yea, so was my mother. He came to the United States
in 1912. He had been educated as an horticulturist
at one of the real old Dutch horticulture schools.
However, he found very little opportunity in Holland
and decided to come to the United States. So he
worked on nrivate estates in the East. Then in 1°-15
he came to San Francisco to see the World's Fair, the
Panama Pacific Exposition. He's always thought it
was terribly prophetic that he should have done this

Wilson: as a poor Dutch immigrant. It was one of the greatest
experiences of hia life, both the Exposition and going
to Yosemite Valley. So the walls of our house were
always covered with photos of Yosemite and the sun
going down behind Seal Rock and the Golden Gate and
so on. All these things wtre familiar to me from
early boyhood.

Teiser: Where did you live?

Wilson: This was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That's where I was
born. In order to get born I had to have my mother.
In 1920 my father, after serving in the American Army,
decided to go back to Holland to see his relatives again,
and ,1ust to see whether he'd prefer to go back. But
he found it terribly small and stultifying compared
to his American experiences, so he decided to come
back to the United States. On the same boat wopr a
very frightened Dutch girl who was going to be a secre
tary at the consulate in New York City - the Dutch Con
sulate. Her name was Christine van der Goot. She is
naturally an extremely timid person, at least on the
surface, but she has great fortitude in many ways.
She needed a guide to the new world and my father

Wilson: quickly took her in tow, showed her the sights of New
York. He continued to work outside of New York on an
estate. Eventually they decided to get married. He
had, at this uoint, found a job at the University of
Michigan as head of the botanical gardens. They planned
to build a special cottage there for him and new green
houses. So, that's where I was born.

Teiser: What year?

Wilson: 1923. My brother was born there two years later.

Teiser: What 's his name?

Wilson: Norman Henry Wilson. At the botanical gardens the things
I remember are sitting in tremendouse fields of flowers
and thinking how beautiful the world was. Also there
was a tremendous construction project - the University
of Michigan stadium, which was at the time the biggest
in the country, was being built. We'd go over there
and watch its progress. All the greenhouses were ex
panding and my father was winning prizes for his chry
santhemums. So that we lived in a really burgeoning
world. Dad was quite ambitious, and with my mother's
help as a secretary, he wrote letters to every other
university in the United States. He finally got a

Wilson: better Job at Smith College in Northamnton, Massachu
setts. This was 1930. That was a wonderful place to
grow up as a boy because of the rich cultural atmosphere
at Smith. All the great concert orchestras were coming
through. I went to the Smith College Day School, a
progressive school run by the college for the students
in education courses. It was really an independent
school - set up, I think, originally, for the children
of the faculty.

Also, during this period, my mother became active
in the peace movement. She was with the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, which was very active then.

Teiser: She was a member of the Fellowship?

Wilson: Yes. Also, she was the head of the local chanter of

the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Many were the rallies my brother and I marched in.

One of the first memories I have of anthing re
lating to printing is a poster which the organization
had put out. It was called "Toys of Death," and it
showed a little boy playing with cannons and tin soldiers.
It made a big impression on me. Then the Women's In
ternational League wanted to reproduce it in the town

Wilson: newspaper, so my mother had a cut made. She brought

home the cut. I got very curious about it and wondered
how it could be printed. She didn't know, so I said
to myself: "Maybe if I put writing ink over it and
pressed it on the paper it would print." I tried it,
but nothing happened. (Laughter)

Teiser: Just think, your printing career might have ended.

Wilson: Yes, I was terribly discouraged. No matter how hard
I stamped on it, it wouldn't print. (Laughter) The
necessity of a tacky ink never occurred to me, of course.

Unfortunately about 1937 Dad was fired from Smith
College, and suddenly this blissful period ended. He
had a run-in with one of the faculty members. Here
it was the depths of the depression, no job, and all
Dad could do to earn a living was to type theses for
the college girls. Finally after much hunting - about
two years - he found a job on a private estate in Pride's
Crossing on the Gold Coast north of Boston - the North
Shore, as it is properly called. So we moved to Pride's
Crossing and lived in the great manor house of the es
tate, overlooking the bay - Salem and Marblehend.

Wilson: I went to Beverly High School, did pretty well, and
was made editor of the yearbook. I decided that we
needed a poem for each member of the class and there
were four hundred of them. It seemed like a small
challenge to stay up half of the nipht writing verses
about people I hardly knew at all. (Laughter) Then
it came to the point of sending them to the high school
print shop. The r>oems, which I had so neatly type
written, came back so completely garbled that I had
an utter loathing for printers. There was nothing
lower, I thought, than being a printer.

Also, for that yearbook, I made a small dummy
and got estimates from several nrinters. I was very
intrigued by the kind of cover which is stuffed like
a pillow and has an overall photograph of the school
on it. I thought that was what we must have. When
the estimates came in I had to abandon the whole thing.
The yearbook came out looking terrible. (Laughter) So
I was finished with anything to do with nrinting.

During this period college enrollment was so easy
to come by that one could compete, if one had a half-
decent academic record, for scholarships at various

Wilson: colleges. So I applied to Harvard, Amherat and Wes-
leyan. Harvard admitted me but didn't come through
with a scholarship. Amherst came through with one
and Wesleyan came through with a better one. I'm
sure that it was a difference of all of $50, but
anyway, I went to Wesleyan. My ma .lor interests
when I went to school were English literature and
music, playing the clarinet. I started playing the
clarinet back in Northampton. They had an excellent
English department at Wesleyan. They permitted me
to sit in on advanced lectures in my freshman year,
so that I immediately became acquainted with Proust,
Eliot, and Pound and was swept into the whole world
of English literature.

At the same time my mother had refused to let
me join a fraternity. She'd seen how fraternity boys
behaved at house parties, how drunk they got, and what
terrible things went on there, so I couldn't ,1oin a
fraternity. This left me having to eat at the local
restaurants. At one of them I ran into a few other
fellows who also hadn't joined fraternities. It turned
out to be the most brilliant group. They were mostly

Wilson: Juniors and seniors then, while I was still a fresh
man. This little conversation group, usually at both
lunch and dinner, was as stimulating as you could ever
dream of. Some were majoring in physics, one in re
ligion, another in English literature. They covered
the whole spectrum.

Teiser: What year was this?

Wilson: This would have been 1941. Of course, one Sunday after
noon while we were listening to the New York Philharmonic
symphony at one of the faculty members' houses, the pro
gram was broken into with the great announcement that
the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. That meant that
we would have to be drafted, and college days were soon
to be over.

A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR IN WORLD WAR II

Wilson: During this period, also, several of the members of

our conversation dinner group turned out to be pacifist-
ically inclined. They had an P. 0. R. (Pellowshio of
Reconciliation) chapter at the college, led by two of
the philosonhy professors. Also, a Quaker Meeting was
being started at Wesleyan. So I became tremendously
interested in and dedicated to these grouns and gradually
decided that I would have to apoly to be a conscientious
objector.

Teiser: You had not been a member of the Friends?

Wilson: No.

Teiser: Did you become one?

Wilson: Yes, I became a member of the Meeting. Of course, mem
bership in the Quakers is largely a voluntary thing.
If you're so inclined you're usually accepted. As a
result of this I was able to write a sufficiently good
defense of my position, so that I was classified 4E,
which was the conscientious objector's classification.

Bancroft Library

Wilson: I was drafted in the spring of 1942 and sent to a camp
at Big Flats, New York. I only stayed there for about
a week and then was transferred to Trenton, North Da
kota.

Teiser: How many years had you had in college, ,1uat one year
then?

Wilson: One and a half years. The C. 0. camps (under govern
ment direction) were subsidized and administered by the
historic peace churches, the Mennonites, the Brethren,
and the Quakers. Each of those churches has a service
committee, and the American Friends Service Committee
administered the camt) at Trenton. But unlike the Men
nonites, the Quakers were very open to having neonle
who were in the camps for any reason, whether political
or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Catholics, or whatever back
ground they came from.

Teiser: Were you simply sent where someone else wanted you to

be or did you have some control over where you were sent?

Wilson: At that time we were sent. However, after you became

familiar with the system it appeared that if you applied
for a transfer elsewhere you could get it. So we kept
always looking for projects that were more interesting,

Bincroft libran

Wilson: such as mental hospitals. That was something I did dur
ing the summer between my freshman and sophomore year
at college, was to work in a mental hospital as an at
tendant - a revealing experience that helped eventually
with fine printing, dealing a lot with humanity. (Laughter)
But the project at Trenton, North Dakota was simuly
leveling off the Missouri River bottomland in western
North Dakota, near Williston. The ironic thing was
that after building all these farms, oil was discovered
in that very area and all the farms were abandoned.
Now there is just a forest of oil wells. I went back
to see it.

During this period I became very interested in
Quaker philosophy, the mystics and the saints - like
Saint Francis. I decided that one thing I could do,
because obviously one of the great causes of war was
the desire for material possessions, was to declare
myself to be in voluntary poverty, a state in which
one gives all of his possessions to the community.
According to a phrase that I picked up somewhere, "The
true monk possesses only his lyre." So I kept my
clarinet, but that was all I owned. (Laughter)

Wilson: lii the hours when I wasn't working on the project, I
and a few other friends who were similarly disposed
would go into the wheat towns and ask people on the
street if we could help them, in cleaning up things,
helping them load trucks, or whatever - just the saint
ly life of giving freely to others.

However, I had just enough of the taste of civil
ization so that after about a year the North Dakota
life began to pall a little. At that point a grout)
of doctors appeared from the University of Minnesota.
They were conducting experiments in the Laboratory of
Physiological Hygiene and needed human guinea nigs.
These tests included bed rest, the deteriorating effect
of going to bed after an operation or with a disease!
life raft rations; starvation, and so on. We were very
worried at that point whether these things were being
used in the war effort. But we were assured that they
weren't. The question of whether life raft rations
would give a flier who was shot down another chance
to fly again and kill again we mulled over by the
hour. We finally decided that it was in the best
interests of humanity. Nevertheless, at the end of
the war I got a beautiful certificate from the War

Wilson: Department thanking me for my contribution to the war
effort! (Laughter) After a year of treadmill walking,
starving, etc, the experiments reinforced in me a dis
gust with science as opposed to art or the huraanities--
a disgust with the stratification of everything on a
scientific basis. I realized that I was primarily in
terested in the arts.

After the experiments were over I'd heard that one
of the C.O. camps was being set up on the Oregon coast
as a "fine arts camps." The artists had been notorious
trouble-makers in other campe, and the Service Committees
decided to put all of them in one camt> as far away from
the centers of civilization as possible. They could
just work on each other and bother no one else. (Laughter)

Teiser: Who set up that camp?

Wilson: It was sponsored by the Brethren of all people, who have
no more connection with art--it's ,1ust a nice, whole
some Midwest peace church. My transfer came through and
I hitch-hiked across the country to Waldport?

Teiser: How did that happen? Were you just given a leave?

Wilson: Yes. They gave me the funds, I think, to travel, but

Wilson: I preferred to hitchhike. We, of course, weren't paid
anything in the camps. I think we were given two
dollars a month allowance and thnt was it. The rest
was volunteer.

Teiser: When was that?

Wilson: This would have been the summer of 1944. I found that
the "fine arts" group (at Waldport) weren't painting
and writing poetry and playing music as I had expected.
The first thing I saw was a printing press with a man
named William Everson, who had organized the prorram,
feeding sheets for a book of his noetry into it. I
was really horrified because it turned out to be a
publishing house rather than what I imagined an art
community should be. In the meantime I was assigned
to the cleaning crew within the camp. One of my mates
in pushing the broom around was a fellow named Martin
Ponch. He was at that camp as editor of The Compaa s ,
the magazine for the Civilian Public Service system,
the over-all government administration of all the camps,
One day, as we were sweeping away, he told me of this
terrible problem he was having in printing the covers
of the magazine. He had had the black form printed by

Wilson: offset in Portland, Oregon. But each sheet was out
of register. In other words, the image was on a
different place on each sheet. He wanted to add
linoleum blocks in several colors, but there was no
way to register them. I agreed to take a look at
his problem. As we swept, my mind started working,
although I knew nothing about the mechanics of print
ing, or how one would go about registering color blocks
into a previously printed form. Soon I worked out a
system in which each cover was slipped into pieces of
slitted cardboard, so that the image on each sheet
could be registered with the slits. The cardboard was
then fed to the guides. We had a crew of about ten
working on it, inserting the sheets. The cress ran again!
The job was saved!

Teiser: What kind of press did they use?

Wilson: It was an old platen press called the Challenge-Gordon,

14" x 22", "a clam-action monster of incalculable vintage,"
as Everson once called it in a colophon.

Teiser: (Laughter) Let me interrupt you just a second and ask
you about Everson. He, at that time, had experience
in printing?

Wilson: Yes, he came from a family of printers. His father
was a printer in Selma, California. He'd had his
rebellion against his father and hated printing. But
what little he had learned of it came in very handy.
So when he and a few others arrived at the camp to
start the Pine Arts Program, they bought this great
press from a .junk dealer in the town of Waldport.

Teieer: Imagine there being one there.

Wilson: Yes. It cost $90. Fortunately there was a professional
pressman who was in the camp, a man from Chicago who
had no interest whatever in the art. But he knew how
to get a press functioning. He soon left camp for the
army, and the artists were left on their own to fight

with the monster.
Teiser: This waa really the beginning of Bverson's career?

Wilson: No, not really. He'd had a couple of books of poetry
published before the war. One of them was printed by
Ward Ritchie. These were his San Joaquin Poems. It
established, in his mind at least, a pretty high stand
ard of what a book should be. At the same time, we
were constantly seeing the books that New Directions
were putting out, like the Poet of the Month series.
It was more or less on those books that the Waldport

Wilson: series of poetry books was modeled. New Directions
used the best printers in the country and sold them
for fifty cents. Since we didn't count our labor
as being worth anything, we sold them for twenty-
five cents. (Laughter)

Teiser: How many of them did you put out?

Wilson: I think there were about five put out at Waldport.
At first I had no connection with them at all. I
was helping Martin Ponch with The Compass magazine
primarily.

Teiser: Writing?

Wilson: Not writing, just assembling it, more or leas. As
material came in to be nrinted I would more or less
organize it so that we could decide just how much to
have in an issue. But then, gradually, I realized that
Everson's gang needed some help with type-setting so
I helped out on aome of the books. Finally, Ponoh
convinced me to print a whole section of the magazine,
the poetry section - setting and printing all through
the night when the press wasn't being used by the Un-
tide grouo.

Teiser: What was the Untide group?

Wilson: That was the name of the poetry book section. It
has an odd derivation. There was a mimeographed
newspaper called The Tide within the caran. Those
who rebelled against the mimeographed newspaper called
theirs The Untide. (Laughter) I think there's a
John Donne quote: "That which is not tide is untide."
(Laughter)

Teiser: What was your project?

Wilson: A section of The Compass magazine devoted to poetry.

Teiser: Oh, I see, to go into the regular magazine.

Wilson: That was my total project on my own. By the time I'd
finished with that, I realized it was slavery standing
in front of a press all night.

Teiser: How long did it take you to actually do it?

Wilson: I don't know, it seemed like night after night, week
in and week out.

Teiser: Over a long period?

Wilson: Yes.

Teiser: How many cages was it?

Wilson: I don't know, it must have been perhaps twenty-four
pages.

Bancroft Librar

EARLY INTEREST IN THEATER

Wilson: Another aspect of the Waldport program I should mention,
It was very soon after I arrived that some people arriv
ed from the Hedgerow Theater in Pennsylvania, which had
been traditionally pacifist, and was the oldest contin
uing repertory theater in the United States. They had
a very high standard of production, particularly of
the modern classics, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, and so
on. Martin Ponch had also been an actor in New York,
so these people immediately decided that they should
have theatrical productions there at Waldport.

Teiser: Was Martin Ponch primarily an actor?

Wilson: Yes, originally he'd been an actor in the New York

theater, mainly character parts. He was quite a young
man. I suppose he was in his thirties. But he had the
ability and physical make-up to do a whole range of
character parts. The only problem then was that there
were no women in the camp. So we were very limited in
what we could do. We did an original by Martin, called

B.neroff Library

Wilson: Tennessee Justice, whioh was a race relations play.

But then two fellows arrived who were musicians. One
of them was named Broadus Erie. He was a really first
rate concert violinist. He'd been first chair in sev
eral symphony orchestras. So we started a string quar
tet there. He had come with a man named Robert Harvey
who also played violin. So they were the first and
second violins. We didn't have any viola. So I olayed
the viola part on the clarinet. We did have an ex
cellent cello. We gave little concerts in the camp.
Both of them (Erie and Harvey) had found that there
were some tourist cabins across the coast road whioh
weren't being used because of gas rationing. So they
decided that they would have their wives come out from
New York and perhaps they could work in some of these
art projects, too.

Harvey's wife was Joyce Lancaster. She came out.
I'd had an inkling she was coming because it turned out
she was an old friend of my philosophy professor at
Wesleyan, one of the major pacifists on the Wesleyan
campus, and had met my mother at his home. So I had
known something about her. When she arrived, immediately

Wilson: we started in on a production of Ibsen's Ghosts, Joyce
was cast as Mrs. Alving. I was assigned to running the
lights. Our equipment was very primitive. We had
tin can spotlights - giant tomato cana - and salt water
dimmers, which boiled and fumed as the play went on.
(Laughter)

As a result of this experience I became tremendous
ly interested in the theater and also tremendously in
terested in Joyce. It turned out her marriage was rather
rocky. Aa things developed we became more involved with
each other. Finally she decided that the situation was
impossible and that she'd better go back to their farm
in the Catskill Mountains in New York. This left me
at the camp. However, the whole C.O. situation by then
was disintegrating anyway. One's feeling that he was
making any testimony or saying anything against war
was rather futile at that point. The work of the pro
jects seemed meaningless. It was mostly planting trees,
hacking away at the earth, although occasionally fighting
forest fires, too.

One of the movements that got started in the camps
was called "Walking-out." This was purposely going

Wilson: A.W.O.L., informing the P.B.I, of your whereabouts
and thereby telling the government that you were an
independent spirit and they had no right to keep you
at meaningless labor. So I got caught up with this
and decided to join Joyce in the East. We both event
ually settled near the Hedgerow Theater and Joyce went
to work there. There was a Quaker graduate center
called Fendle Hill, also outside of Philadelphia. I
went to live there. We saw quite a bit of each other
that winter. We met some people who were in the drama
department at Swarthmore. One of them was very eager
to start a theater. We had by then decided pretty well
that we should start a theater, too. So after many
discussions we decided we ought to scout some of the
cities in the United States and see if maybe there
was more of a possibility on the West Coast. Holly
wood had already contaminated Los Angeles, it rained
too much in Seattle. Finally we decided that I should
go out to San Francisco and see if that had any possi
bilities for a theater.

By this point the war was just over. The F.B.I,
somehow hadn't pounced on me despite the fact that I
had been out of camp for about a year and a half and
had kept them informed of where I was. But they had

Wilson: plenty of other things to think about. So I came

out to San Francisco and soon found that there wasn't
any theater going here except one occasionally pro
ducing group called the Theater Arts Colony. I talked
to the director of that theater and he told me that
it would be impossible to start one here.

Teiser: Who was he?

Wilson: Arthur B. Gleditsch. He said that the minute you tried
to open your doors the fire department would descend on
you; that there was a conspiracy by the big nrofessional
theaters to keep any little theaters out. Furthermore,
he said we needed a lot of capital to do it and that
the situation was just hopeless. I didn't agree with
him at all. At that time I discovered the Ferrier
Theater, the French theater on Washington Street, The
Ferriers were Just retiring and wanted to sell their
place. This gave us a vision of how one could run a
theater and combine it with a restaurant and have
people living in the rooms upstairs - a real "divine
community" effort. As it turned out the Ferriers wanted
$25,000 for their building, an appalling sum. None of
us had ever heard of mortgages. (Laughter) I was alone

Wilson: at that point* I met a few people here who were

similarly interested, but it did begin to seem hope
less to me too.

Teiser: This was 1945?

Wilson: Yes. I was working at the only thing I knew how to

do to turn a penny, printing. I'd heard of a minister
who had a press in Oakland, so I worked there for
about three weeks.

Teiser: Who was he?

Wilson: His name was Ralph Odom; it was on 12th Street in Oak-
land. Everything seemed to be going fine until sud
denly the F.B.I, pounced. There was a nice little
period during which I was in seven jails in eleven
days. I finally ended up in Portland, which was the
"scene of my crime," having "walked out" of the camp
in Oregon. At this noint the whole chain of circum
stances brought Joyce and me together again. Joyce
was working in Seattle. She came down to see some of
her old C.O. friends, some of whom had been released
from the camps and were living in Portland. The word
had gotten out that I was in the jail in Portland,
destined to linger there forever. So, she came down

Wilson: to the jailhouse to see me. We decided that, having
been separated this long and still being in love, the
only thing to do was to get married. So through the
American Civil Liberties Union ahe arranged bail and
I was "sprung."

We set up housekeeping in a log cabin in Union,
Washington, on the Hood Canal in June, 1946. It's
a beautiful place. Just by working a little, picking
oyster off the beach, and weaving cedar bark mats we
managed to survive for a whole summer. A few other
0.0. 's settled there too - painters like Wilfred Lang,
and Clayton and Barbara James - on some land owned by
Waldo Chase, also a pacifist artist. Morris Graves, who
had come to live at Waldport after his rebellion against
the army, was a frequent visitor at Union and was doing
his best bird and ceremonial bronze paintings at the
time. As a matter of fact, we had a couple of exhi
bitions of Graves' work in camp, paintings priced at
$15 or $25 which would bring thousands today. We re
produced some of these by offset in the same issue of
Compass for which I printed the poetry section.

In the meantime we had a group of round -robin
letteys going with some of our theater friends, Kermit

Wilson: Sheets and Martin Fonch among them. This idea of

beginning a theater somewhere was pressing. Event
ually we decided that San Francisco was it and that
we should meet there on a certain day in September,
1946. At that point we had sold enough cedar bark
mats so that we could see our way clear to hitchhike
down the coast and perhaps survive a weekend in San
Francisco. We arrived here but unfortunately we'd
had a great coffin-like box shipped with our possess
ions in it, and whoever we entrusted with expediting
the box had sent it by express. When it came, it
cost so much that it absolutely bankrupted us. For
tunately, Joyce got a Job immediately as a teacher
at what is now the Laurel Hill Nursery School. She's
still there, as director, now.

In the meantime, Kermit Sheets and Martin Ponch
had already arrived here.

Teiser: Where had Kermit Sheets been?

Wilson: He'd been down in Los Angeles.

Teiser: And he had been in your camp?

Wilson: That's right. That was a whole aspect I didn't mention:
a publication which was called the Illiterati. an avant-
garde little magazine of poetry and prose - Rexroth and
so on.

Teiser: Was Rexroth in your camp?

Wilson: No. He was somebody we knew about in San Pranoisoo.
The Illiterati also published Henry Miller, Kenneth
Patchen, and so on. Sheets worked on the "little
magazine" with a Los Angeles architect named Kemper
Nomland, who was very much inspired by the Bauhaus,
sans serif type, and contemporary architecture. It
was at variance with Everson's approach, which was
very classical. The printing at Waldport constantly
vacillated between the two approaches.

Teiser: Was Kermit Sheets involved in the theater, too, in
Waldport?

Wilson: Yes. He had, I think, taught some drama in a high
school before, so he had gotten active in these
productions, too. Another member of the Untide
Press and Illiterati groups was William Eshelman,
who later became the librarian at Los Angeles State
College. But the big influence in the Illiterati
and later in the Untide Press was Kemper Nomland,
in the design aspect. In fact, Nomland and Eshel
man moved the press to Los Angeles after the war
and produced several things.

THE INTERPLAYERS AND PRINTING - BEGINNING

Wilson: Kermit Sheets had done some productions after the
war in Los Angeles and he had a few friends here,
so gradually with this little nucleus of people
we started rehearsing in San Francisco at the Quaker
Center - the Friends' Center, as it was called, on
Sutter Street, Our first productions were two Chek
hov one-acts.

Teiser: Were you at that time participating in the theatrical
activities - were you an actor ever?

Wilson: Yes. We were desperate for actors, and so even I was
put into a role.

Teiser: What was your contribution mainly?

Wilson: Well, primarily as a theater builder, an organizer.
(Xaughter) Simply, I did everything that needed to
be done short of considering myself a full-time actor.
Of course, in order to keep body and soul together for
these productions, I had to find a Job; I realized
that printing was the only thing I had any experience

Wilson: with. So I combed through the phone book and found
something called the Pacific Music Press. Being a
clarinetist I'd always been curious about how music
was printed. I decided I'd find where it was on
Howard Street, and ask for a job. Lo and behold, the
proprietor was a very warm-hearted German of the old
school who, when I told him I was a clarinetist, said
that was fine, it was enough qualification. (Laughter)
So he put me to work.

Teiser: What was his name?

Wilson: Kurt Rainer. It was an interesting shop because it

combined engraving and lithography - direct engraving
onto metal plates and pulling proofs of those and
transferring them to lithograph plates. It had not
been long before that they were actually printing from
stones. They still had the old stones there. Also
they had one of the earliest offset lithography presses.
Unfortunately Mr. Rainer decided to out me in the letter-
press cover printing department. There was no particu
lar design for the covers. He simply looked into his
old stock cut book and if it was a Hawaiian song about
a little grass shack, he would look through his book
and find Uncle Tom's Cabin or something and he'd say,

Wilson: "That's good enough, we use it." (Laughter) But I was
constantly doing experimental things with the type. I'd
been allowed to set un some of the headings for these
covers. There were times when he blew up in horror at
my attempts at modernism.

As the theater developed we became more and more
interested in finding a building* The Quakers weren't
too happy with the plays we were doing, things like
Sartre's No Exit. So we kept hunting for buildings.
One day as Joyce and I were going down Sutter Street,
we saw a building that looked like it had some possi
bilities. We got off the trolley car and went up to the
building and lo and behold it was a print shop. It was
the Grabhorn Press. I decided to ask for a Job. By
that time I was discouraged with the work at Pacific
Music Press. They still hadn't put me in the engraving
department, and for months I did nothing but gather and
staple The Spike Jones Song Book.

Teiser: Why did you particularly want to be in the engraving de
partment?

Wilson: Because I wanted to know how music was done, to really
be able to engrave music. Whenever I saw another print

Wilson: shop I always thought about asking for a job and sometimes
I did. But I always made sure first to find out what
kind of work they did.

There standing at the type case was Bob Grabhorn.
I asked him what kind of press this was? He said, "We
do books." I said, "What kind of books?" Instead of ex
plaining what they did he handed me the great Grabhorn
bibliography. Joyce and I opened it, aghast that such
a magnificent thing could have been done in San Prancis-
co. So I asked him then if he ever needed any help. He
said, "No." But I kept coming back. Then, as we needed
programs for our first plays, I found this group of an
archists - poets and marijuana addicts - who had a little
press which was in a tool shed Just three blocks from
the Grabhorns. So after a very discouraging time getting
paper, (which is pretty well explained in Printing for
Theater.) it turned out the Grabhorns had a great scrap
pile of trimmings.

Teiser: Incidentally, did anyone at Crown-Zellerbach ever object
to your use of the word cartel in the book Printing for
Theater?

Wilson: (Laughter) I once saw Glory Palm Carlberg, who was their

Wilson: public relations director. She said, "I read that thing
you wrote about us. I can give it out, too, and I can
take it. It's okay by me." (laughter)

The Grabhorns were irery generous with their scrap
stockpile. They gave me some interesting little pieces
of heavy green paper. So I thought, I really ought to
print a business card. Maybe I could do some more print
ing at the little press since the anarchists never use
it except in the middle of the night sometimes.

Teiser: Do you really mean that at that late date there were many
people who considered themselves anarchists?

Wilson: Oh yes. Rexroth was one of the leading anarchists. We
went to many meetings organized by him at the Workmen's
Circle. I remember we had some fine meetings - George
Woodcock, who is an English anarchist; Rexroth was always
there in his flowing cape. There were poetry readings
and so on. It was still considered a lively, legitimate
movement. I think part of its interest was heightened by
the Spanish Revolution,

Teiser: But this was some years after that*

Wilson: Yes, it was. But this, of course, put u» in touch with
some of the old guard of San Francisco. We knew about
some of the artists like Ralph Stackpole and Benny Bufano

Wilson: who had been here since before the war. Also, we became
acquainted with some of the poets like James Broughton.

Teiser: I was going to ask about him. He participated in your
theater, did he?

Wilson: He wrote a couple of plays which we finally did. Then

there was Robert Duncan whom we saw often at tmrties

*
and poetry readings. By this time Everson had come down

from the camp. He'd been released. He first set ut> a
hand press at a farm in Sebastopol and then moved it down
to Mary Fabilli's Maybeok house on Ashby Avenue in Berke
ley.

Teiser: Was there a climate of theater interest in San Francisco?

Wilson: We were rather disappointed in it, yet we did manage to
draw audiences of, say, one hundred people for a couple
of week-ends at the Friends* Center. But eventually we
had a tremendouse success with No Exit, which was the
first production of a Sartre play on the West Coast. The
city editor of the Chronicle. John Bruce, came to it. He
persuaded or bludgeoned the Chronicle critic, John Hobart,
to come out to the Palace of the Legion of Honor - "that
all but inaccessible monument," he called it in his review
- and see it. It was the first decent blast of publicity
we had gotten.

And Weldon Kees, whose Poems 19U7-195U I eventually published just
before his apparent suicide.

Wilson: This would have been 1947* In the meantime, of course,

we were constantly on the lookout for a building, Finally
we found one at the corner of Hyde and Beach Street, which
is now occupied by the Playhouse. The building was owned
by the Davis Hardwood Company. Mrs. Lulu Davis, who pre
sided over the wonderful old San Francisco firm, had a
soft heart for the theater. So she leased the building
to us for $150 a month.

Teiser: Didn't she live over the t>art which is now Rolf's Restaurant?

Wilson: Yes, she lived in the loft above her office. The present
Interplayers building was the planing mill of the Davis
Hardwood Company. It's funny how short all these things
live. After she died her son took over, and in a couple
of years he died; things change. In any case, we realized
that we had a tremendouse potential, once we got this
building. We had a concrete floor poured. Endless argu
ments resulted from that. Martin Fonoh insisted that a
theater should have a wooden floor. Things got so bitter
about that, that he didn't stay with the company much long
er. It wasn't just that, of course*

Teiser: But he did leave fairly early.

Wilson: Yes, and he started on his Theater for the World project.

Teiser: Where is he now?

Wilson: He has the Firehouse Repertory Theater on Sacramento.

So we did these first plays, and then, with the new
building, I wanted to set up a little print shoo there.
Life was getting a little complex. At the time we were
doing these first productions, the problem of making a
living was constantly rearing its ugly head. I soon had
quit the job at the Music Press and decided that I could
make a living using the anarchists' press. But, at the
same time, I realized that I knew nothing about it - about
the printing business. So I was constantly looking for
a job where I could get more experience.

Teiser: Did you have a union card?

Wilson: No.

Teiser: The Pacific Music Press was a non-union shop?

Wilson: That's right. I did go down to the union. They always
said, "You can't get into the union unless you have a
Job in a union shop." Then I would go to a union shop
and they said, "You can't work here unless you're a member
of the union." Finally one of the proprietors of one of
the printing businesses was frank with me, and said it was
crazy to even try. "You'd have to have decided when you

Wilson: were fifteen years old that you wanted to be a printer
and then you'd have to "know somebody1 to get in." He
said it was Just hopeless. Especially for someone like
me with a college background. They didn't want anybody
like that. It was tremendously discouraging.

Teiser: If you could have gotten a Job, would you have served a
full apprenticeship?

Wilson: Yes, I think I would have. It was just literally impossible,
though, and the whole mind set and background of people
who were in the printing trade was antithetical to every
thing I was interested in. It would always come up when
I showed a few samples of the work I'd done. They said,
"Oh my God, you're an art printer." (Laughter) As a
result of that discouragement I decided maybe I should
study architecture.

When I was a boy I'd always drawn plans of houses
which I would imagine. In fact I did so much of this
that my mother decided I was some kind of architectural
genius. When we were living in Northampton we sometimes
went to Boston. One day she took me to the Harvard
Architectural School, and asked to see Walter Gropiua
so that she could show him my plans. (Laughter) Fortun
ately, Gropius was occupied, but one of the other professors

Wilson: came out and looked at my plans. I think I was eleven
or twelve then. He said, "These are perfectly marvel
ous but I don't know if they would work as buildings.
There's one thing, Mrs. Wezel, never let anyone destroy
this boy's creativity." This kept coming back to me,
that the architecture field was something that I really
had a feeling for and en joyed. Of all my high school
courses IM enjoyed mechanical drawing the most. Further
more, I understood I could get into the University of
California without any tuition and they had a fine archi
tecture school. So I decided to go over there and to
support myself with printing in the evenings. It turned
out that the architecture course was really a rigorous
curriculum, which would take more than a full-time effort
just to keep up with it. In the meantime I was doing
more and more printing.

FIRST BOOKS

Wilson: Aa my firat fall semester went on I had gotten one

commission for a small book of poetry from a man named
Hyman Swetzoff who was running the Gump's gallery. On
some of the Grabhorn scrap paper I printed a business
card and I took it around to a number of the decorator
stores and fine shops, places like Rasper's, which was
at the top of the contemporary furniture market. They
gave me my first Job doing their business cards. Then
I went to Gump's and met a charming gal there who was

•

in the art department, named Alice Harth. I've since
worked with her on several projects, notably The Spice
Islands Cook Book. She introduced me to the head of
the gallery at Gump's, a man named Hyman Swetzoff, who
was from Boston. He wanted a book of his poems printed,
So, I took that job on. At that point James Broughton

had another book of poems and so I was working on these

two things.

Teiser: What was the Swetzoff book?
Wilson: It's called ins / outs, and was set in Centaur type.

Wilson: I had used it previously for a Merchant of Venice program
and that brought me in contact with Mackenzie and Harris,
the type founders. Carroll Harris1 selection of types
was a strong influence on me. Then Broughton came through
with his Songs for Certain Children, which he wanted illus.
trated with old cuts. It was set by Mackenzie and Harris
in Arrighi, the italic of Centaur. I was working on these
projects in the night-time and week-ends*

Teiaer: Using the same anarchists' press?

Wilsons Yes. There was no heat in the press, one light bulb, the
press was without a motor, but I finally got a motor
for it.

Teiaer: What kind of press was it?

Wilson: It waa an 8" x 12" Challenge-Gordon, a miniature version
of what we had at Waldport.

Teiser: And where was this shot) located?

Wilsons At 1100 O'Parrell Street, where a palm tree still stands.
The mansion is gone. It was in the tool shed of the man
sion. For Brought on1 s book, he wanted to use little old
stock cuts. He knew of a printer named Jack Stauffaoher,
who had just moved his press up from San Mateo. The
Greenwood Press he called it. Jack was rumored to have
a fine collection of old stock outs. He had published

Wilson: a couple of books in San Mateo, mainly on his own en
thusiasms, one of which is bicycle polo, which he hoped
to introduce to America. (Laughter) One day Brought on
and I went down to Jack's shop.

Teiser: Where was it then?

GREENWOOD PRESS

Wilson: It was then at 509 Sansome Street. It was a marvelous

atmosphere and Jack and I immediately had a great rapport.
Basically we were both interested in the same quality
of printing. He had a partner at the time who simply
wasn't interested in printing. Jack seemed to be chaf
ing at the bit. Anyway, he lent me the cuts for the
Broughton book. So James and I worked these out together
with Pauline Kael, the film critic, who was James1 girl
friend at the time. The two flrf them would come over to
the tool shed at night and we would stand there trying
to keep our feet warm and put together these pages and
print them, all on different colored construction papers.

Meanwhile Joyce engaged her nursery school children
in doing paintings for the covers. So each book had a
different cover, a genuine child's painting.

One of the big projects at the School of Architect
ure, which I was still going to in the day, was that we
had to draw up some building in San Francisco, some aspect

Wilson: of a building. I picked what I realize now was about

the greatest challenge in town, the gate at the Japanese
Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. It had ten thousand
separate pieces of wood. It had to be what was called,
"a measured drawing," which meana you have to measure
every aspect. So I went out there on Sunday and I meas
ured all day, every piece in it, but still I wasn't half-
finished. Evening came, it was late fall and getting
terribly cold, and I was very discouraged with the pro
ject. Who should come riding along on his bicyle but
Jack Stauffacherl So we sat down and started to talk
printing. Jack was saying how he didn't like his partner.
He said, "What I need is somebody like you around the
place, somebody that is really interested in printing."
I said I was still going to architecture school and I
couldn't do that. Still, I said, it might be a good
idea. So Jack said, "Think about it." So I thought
about it some more and I finally decided that I really
loved printing, and that architecture was far too remote
and difficult a profession to try to £et into at this
point in my life. Furthermore printing had the marvel
ous aspect of being able to get an immediate result

Wilson: which was saleable. Whereas architecture was a tre
mendous strain, with thousands of little intermediate
steps. Jack and I talked some more and I agreed. He
had gotten a book commission or two and we agreed that
I would go to work for him at $50 a week.
v Things went very well those first few months. We
started on another project of our own, which was the
Eric Gill essay And Who Wants Peace?, which we did in
a monumental folio on hand-made paper. It was in homage
to our patron saint of typography at that moment, Eric
Gill, and also a testimony of our interest in pacifism
and our anti-war feelings. Mary Pabilli did a linoleum
cut for it. We sold that at $5 a copy, and they went
immediately.

Teiser: What year was that?

Wilson: This was 1948. I've described pretty well what the at-

mospher of the Greenwood Press was in A Portfolio of Book
Club Printers. One of the books we did turned out quite
well. When we sent it into the A.I.G.A.* for their Fifty
Books of the Year competition, it was selected.

Teiser: Which was that.

American Institute of Graphic Arts

Wilson: That was called Mining and Hunting in the Far West.
published by William P. Wreden.

Teiser: What year was this?

Wilson: This was 1948.

Teiser: I can ask you here or later about the A.I.G.A. I under
stand that one of the difficulties of the competition
is that you have to furnish the committee with a great
number of books.

Wilson: It was five copies.

Teiser: Only five?

Wilson: Yes, plus a hanging fee, which often seems enough to hang
the printers. (Laughter) It's, I think, a $25 hanging
fee. But it has discouraged a lot of West Coast printers
from submitting because if they're doing limited editions
of books, say, that are selling at $100 apiece the minute
they're issued, it's a large piece of change to simply
pass out. The amount of money might well be put into
the book itself.

Teiser: Yes.

Wilson: Jack's problems at that time were not artistic but strict
ly of a business nature. He had no more experience with
business than I had. As December came on we realized

Wilson: that we weren't making any money, in fact, my salary had
been reduced to $25 a week. Jack was making less. I
remember his method of bookkeeping was to go down to
the bank and inquire how much he had and then he would
take it all out up to the point of Si, so he had Si left
in his account. He would give me S25 and the rest he
would take for himself, which was probably $18.50. (Laughter)

Then, somebody told us that there was such a thing
as income tax, which we'd never heard of before. I said
to Jack, "I suppose we have to give some kind of records."
He said, "I don't keep any records." I said, "We'd better
find somebody who can tell us about this." I think through
another printer I had heard of somebody who was a print
ing accountant, he specialized in that. Or it WPS prob
ably an ad in the Pacific Printer magazine. This man's
name was Ralph Gilkerson. Gilkerson and Staff, he called
himself. He came out--he was an incredible character.
When he saw how we operated, he practically collapsed.
(Laughter) We didn't have a record, an invoice, a sales
tag, sales tax receipts, or anything. Then he said,
"You'll have to pay the income tax. You haven't had
withholding tax?" So this whole grim reality of

Wilson: the business world suddenly swept in on us. Jack was
practically bankrupt and I was too. Then there were
no more jobs. I went around from office building to
office building trying to find somebody who would give
us a job of some kindr even city jobs. We bid on the
dog bite forms. (Laughter)

At that point, Joyce and I— my parents had been
rather disturbed about our marriage because it involved
divorce — we finally decided that things had smoothed
out enough so that we could go East. So we took a trip
to the East. During that period I decided to call on
a few printers in New York.

Teiser: What year was this?

Wilson: This was the end of 1948, say December. One of the print-
ers I called on was Joseph Blumenthal, one of the best
New York printers. In the course of conversation he
mentioned to me that the old Merrymount Press was in
the process of closing down its doors forever. Ut>dike
had died not too long before. They were selling out
their stock, their equipment. He advised me to go up to
Boston and see what I could pick up.

Not having any money at all I asked my father if
he could lend me something. He gave me $50 or so in a

Wilson: money belt. I went up to the Merrymonnt Press and John
Bianchi thought that I was a millionaire who'd come from
California and was ready to buy his whole place. He
spent the better part of the day showing me his complete

library, which has since gone to the Huntingtonf(0 his
great stock of types, which I wish I could have afforded
now. (Laughter) He had tons of paper, very fine oaners,
as well as the hand-made paper that they had left over
from about forty years of operation. So I inquired about
a ream of this and ten sheets of that, (Laughter) Ne
gotiations developed and he agreed to sell me all their
hand-made paper for $50,

Teiser: My word! By this time you had had enough experience
so that you knew how to buy paper?

Wilson: Yes, that's right, just through practical negotiations
in a business way. But there were lots of things we
still didn't "bwy, (Laughter) I had all that paper
transported to San Francisco, a stack perhaps five feet
high. We shipped it all to the Greenwood Press and Jack

and I printed various books on that for quite a few years
afterwards, small editions.
Teiser: What were some of them?

Wilson: Jack did a very nice book of Fifteen Letters of Goethe.

I did a little book of poems by Glen Cof field, illustrated
by Lee Mullican, the painter. I printed it at night
at the Greenwood Press.

Teiser: As a project of your own?

Wilson: Yes, as a project of my own. Then the Centaur Press,

which had been started by James Broughton and Kermit Sheets,
agreed to distribute it.

By that point Jack and I had had to part company
during the day. It was a very black period.

Teiser: What were you doing during the day?

Wilson: During the day I was hunting for a job and I simply could
n't find a job. Finally one of the engravers who had
made some cuts for me told me I could be a salesman for
him. He was a rough, burly fellow and he said, "The way
you go out and sell engravings, see, you stand in front
of Walter Mann's engraving shop and you wait until he
comes out and then you see where he goes. Then when you
get to the building you try to follow him without him
seeing you. When he gets to the office and goes in, then
you know that a hot job is cooking." (Laughter) "Then
after he leaves, you go in and you underbid him, see."

Wilson: (Laughter) He'd underbid anybody. I din't have much

luck following Walter Mann around. But I did have amazing
luck in selling outs to various magazines because this
man's prices were 50$ less than anybody else's.

Teiser: Do you want to name him?

Wilson: His name is John Kowalsky. I don't know if he's in busi
ness any more. After three weeks I decided I was not
an engraving salesman.

I finally picked up a job at something called the
Phoenix Press, which was at 300 Broadway, on the top
floor. Its specialty was correcting mistakes in can
labels that large lithography houses had made. They
would set up block-out forms, blocking out the word
that was wrong and reprinting it.

Teiser: Weren't they sometimes simply changes?

Wilson: Yes, that's right, especially for olive sizes, which
began at "Giant" and ended at "Super Colossal."

Teiser: I knew the name of that man, who was he?

Wilson: His name was Tom Anderson. That's the reason I was in
terested in the place, because he had had a magazine
called San Francisco Life, which he hoped to revive.
It was the lowest form of work imaginable. It was at

Wilson: that point fortunately, that The Interplayers found
the building at Hyde and Beach Streets.

PRINTING AND THE INTERPLAYERS - MATURITY

Wilson: When we got the building at Hyde and Beach Streets

and we had a concrete floor in place, it was obvious
that it would supnort a printing press. So we placed
one in the lobby of the theater. I bought it from Kownl-
sky, a small platen, with money borrowed from my parents,

Teiser: What was it?

Wilson: It was another 8" x 12" Challenge-Gordon. It WRS the
cheapest I could get. But I soon traded it to a man
named Leo Holub for a 10" x 15" Colt's Armory, which wns
a much better press. This particular one was highly de
fective, but it still did very good work. (Laughter)

When I started there at printing, immediately the
Interplayers programs that I did brought in some work.
Then the Buena Vista Cafe across the street waa just un
dergoing its metamorphosis from a quiet place where the
cable car gripmen went in to have a bowl of clam chowder,
The new proprietor, Jack Koeppler, decided to put in a

Wilson: large bar and a beer list. So he asked me to do a list
of the beers, which I set in a new type I'd gotten from
Amsterdam, the Libra. This made a spectacular success.
People went to the Buena Vista, then they would come over
to my print shop to order printing. Pretty soon I was
doing half my jobs in Libra type. (Laughter)

About the same time I had a few book coraissions.
One of them was another book from Swetzoff, who by then
had gone back to Boston. One of his compatriots there,
a man named George Anthony, had written a long poem called
The Scholar Dunce • and Swetzoff wanted something in the
nature of a lush art printing. I decided to use some
of the different hand-made papers from the Merrymount
Press. So they eventually returned to Boston, between
the covers of that book.

Teiser: What was your first experience using the lithographer?

Wilson: That first Compass cover I mentioned was my very first
experience. Then when I was with the Phoenix Press a
few people who had known about me through the theater
programs and at the Greenwood Press, followed me to the
Phoenix Press. One of these was a very wealthy gal who
was the wife of the heir of the Gantner Knitting Mills.
She had just gone through a very sad divorce situation.

Wilson: She was an Australian girl, named Neilma.

Teiser: She was married to Vallejo Oantner?

Wilson: Yes. She had written a book which was really intended
to assure her parents in Australia that everything was
all right and that she was enjoying life and so on. It
was called The Story of the Wayfarer and the Seafarer.
The Wayfarer was the new Dodge convertible she had. And
the Seafarer was a young handsome blonde man who was a
sailor or something; or maybe she was the seafarer, I've
forgotten. (Laughter) But the young man was intimately
involved in her well-being. She wanted this done as a
Christmas book. He had done some drawings for it. It
was obvious that the drawings would have to be reproduced
by lithography. At that time the best lithographer I
knew about was Wallace Kibbee and Son. I realized that
the son known as Wallie had done quite a bit of designing
and I was always very impressed with the clean modernity
of his style. It seemed to me strange that the senior
Wallace, who was the brother of Guy Kibbee, the film actor,
and a marvelous character himself, should be associated
with what at the time was the most avant garde commercial
printing being done in San Francisco. I told Anderson
they should do Mrs. Gantner'a book.

Teiser: Was that when they were on California Street?
Wilaon: Yes. Since the Phoenix Press couldn't do any offset

work (and Charles Wood wasn't located there yet), Ander-

it to
son let me take,, Wallace Kibbee for the Phoenix Press.

We had our difficulties with that, because the job was
being handled through the Phoenix Press and billed by
the Phoenix Press, but sub-contracted to Wallace. Mrs.
Gantner had given her down payment to Anderson, and An
derson refused to pay anything in advance to Kibbee and
kept the funds. (Laughter) In the meantime Mrs. Gantner
was chewing her fingernails to get the book out in time
for Christmas to give as a present to her family in Aus
tralia. I was caught in the middle. I tried to convince
Anderson that he had to be honest and release the money.
But he simply didn't have it. He was having hard times.
I remember one fateful day when the mail arrived at the
Phoenix Press. Some of it looked like checks. I Just
put it up to Anderson that he had to give me the money,
otherwise the whole job was down the drain — nothing could
begin. So he painfully opened one envelope after another
and pulled out the checks. Finally one last little check

came in for about $15. That made the total amount, and
he agreed to release it to Kibbee. So we cleared it up

.»••

Wilson: (Laughter) Wallace Kibbee, during all of this period,
was terribly strict, refusing to begin until paid, but
still very warm-hearted, a marvelous example.

Teiser: You're speaking of Wallace, Sr.

Wilson: Yes. He was a man of integrity who handled his business
properly and with dignity. So, he turned out the job,
and extremely well. We mixed a special sea blue ink.

•

Mrs. Gantner was just delighted with it. Then she flew
down a planeload of these books to Australia on B.O.A.C.
in time for Christmas. (Laughter) So that was ray pre
vious experience with lithography, which I used again in
The Coppa Murals by Warren Unna.

The commission for which I bought the Kelly B,
Cylinder Press was The Coppa Murala, This was my first
commission from the Book Club of California. As soon
as I was established there at Hyde and Beach I had this
book to do which fitted in very nicely with my own inter
ests — restaurants and the bohemian life of San Francisco.

Teiser: Did that have illustrations in several colors?

Wilson: No, it had black-and-white half-tones of the old photo
graphs of the murals in the restaurant. I was looking
for a lithographer with a large press to print the photo-

Wilson: graphs and I heard of Charles R. Wood. He had just set

up shop at 300 Broadway and that was ray first association
with him. We've worked together on many Jobs since.

I think it was Joseph Henry Jackson's influence that
gave me the first Book Club commission. I would say that
happened as a result of the first little book, the Pour
Ghost Stories by Sara Gerstle, that I printed at Hyde
and Beach Streets. Also, Joseph Henry Jackson edited
the Book Club's Wine Keepsake series, about old Cali
fornia wineries, which he continued right up to the time
he died. He had been a very good supporter and man to
work with. It's, of course, unfortunate that we don't
have anyone today who is a publicist who is really inter
ested in fine printing. James D. Hart took over then,
and we have had many happy associations and collaborations,
notably My First Publication and Robert Lewis Stevenson's
San Francisco, edited by him for the Book Club of Cali
fornia.

Teiser: You mentioned that you bought the Kelly B. Cylinder Press
to do The Coppa Murals.

Wilson: Yes. I'd heard that there was a Kelly press available

and I knew of the Kelly as a good press to have, because

Wilson: that was the one that was used at the Pacific Music
Press. All I'd done there was oil it every morning.
But it seemed to do decent work. The book I designed
for the Book Club with the large photographs was far
too big for my Colt's Armory press. So therefore I
decided to buy a Kelly. I thought I would teach my
self how to run it. But once we got it installed at
the theater at Hyde and Beaoh Streets, it seemed to be
just a little too much. (Laughter) Now how was I go
ing to find out how to run this monster? In the mean
time I'd heard of Lawton Kennedy. In fact I'd been
over to the Westgate Press once, looking for a job.
At that time, though, I'd only talked to his brother
Alfred Kennedy, who I thought was the proprietor of the
place. Then as I inquired about how to learn to run a
Kelly everyone said to go see Lawton Kennedy. So fin
ally I went over to Oakland one day with Joyce, and
Lawton came up from the back of the shop where he WHS
working on a Miehle vertical and said, "Sure, I can come
over and help you." And Preda (Kennedy) then appeared
and she said, "We'd love to come over." And the two
of them did and we had several sessions in which he showed

Wilson: me how to bring this monster to heel.

But then of course, with all the odd hand -made
papers I was trying to use, and strange formats and
so on, the press would constantly be balking. I'd
call Lawton up to ask him what could be wrong. (Laughter)
He'd doctor it over the telephone.

Our theater was proving quite successful. We'd
had a fine production of Phoenix Too Frequent, which
Joyce had directed. It was a tremendous success. Then
one afternoon, when we were all doing Well of the Saints
by Synge, suddenly the fire department appeared. They
said, "You can't have a theater here. The place isn't
a Class A building. You'll have to close up." We said,
"But we have an audience coming tonight. The tickets
are all sold." One of the firemen said, "I'm a member
of the Dolphin Rowing Club down there," indicating a
wooden building on the waterfront. "You could rent that
for tonight if you want." That wasn't Class A either,
but most of the members were policemen and firemen.
(Laughter) So we moved all the sets and costumes down
there and directed the audience down there too. Prom
that point on our theater was simply closed. We started

Wilson: investigating how we could get it cleared and open again.
We appealed to all kinds of politicians, lawyers, art
commissioners, society matrons, perennial sponsors, and
so on, but no one knew how to get the theater open.
So we finally decided to make a plan for rebuilding it
as a Class A building. We would get some estimates
from contractors and see if we could get the money to
do that.

One of the first contractors we called in was a
man whose name can now be revealed as Charles Spivock
of the Empire Construction Company. He took a look
around the building and he said, "But this building is
perfectly safe. There's simply nothing wrong with it.
It doesn't meet the code but there's no reason why it's
not perfectly feasible to have performances here. I
don't know why they're giving you such a bad time."
We said, "They say it's not Class A, it has to be steel
and concrete." He said, "The way to clear this is to
go through the Board of Permit Appeals, the way most
things are done in San Francisco. You make up plans
for some minimum alteration. When those are turned
down by the Building Inspection Department because it
isn't Class A, then take it to the Board of Permit Appeals,

Wilson: We'll see that it gets through there." As it turned
out, when the day of the hearings came ur>, only four
of the five members of the board showed up. Two were
against and two voted for, a tie, which means no. Sni-
vock said, "That's all right, I'll have lunch with
the fire commissioner tomorrow. You can open up."
(Laughter) He did and it was cleared. After that,
anyone could have a theater in San Francisco.

The rumor had been that Homer Curran, who ran the
Curran and Geary Theaters, had purposely had the Class
A section of the city code written in, so that only
the Geary, Curran and Alcazar would pass and other thea
ters would be kept out. How true this is I don't know.
Whether Louis Lurie had a part in this policy I don't
know. But in any case, ever since then no one has bother-
ed the theaters that came after we did.

Teiser: Has this worked to the benefit of others?

Wilson: Yes, then it became possible for the Actor's Workshop
to set up, first above the Judo Academy on Divisidero
Street, which was totally illegal, being on the second
floor, and then at the Elgin Street Theater, which Inter
had to be torn down to make way for the freeway.

Teiser: But it did break this impasse?

Wilson: Yes, it cracked an impossible barrier. So then we

were open again and we had a few very successful pro
ductions. Everything seemed to be going so beautifully,
in fact, so successfully that we were making a lot of
money. We even had several thousand dollars in the
bank. We had a man who was the treasurer at the time,
who had also come up from the Hedgerow Theater, named
Roy Franklyn. He was a strange character. He was
quite an attractive guy and really dedicated to the
theater. But he had a complex that he was the king
of creation. At one point he felt that he had enough
support within the group so that he could take over as
the sole director. This first took the form of a direct
attack on Joyce and of her acting in a certain role,
in La Parisienne, which had been a very successful play.
Most of us thought it was beautifully done, but it could
not meet what he considered the serious standards of
the Hedgerow Theater. So, as a result of this, Franklyn
said that he was either taking over as sole manager-
director with complete choice of plays, actors, personnel,
and so on, or the theater would close. So we had a
new manager. He simply held out with his faction, which
was just exactly an even split - a split exactly down

Wilson: the middle of the group. The rest of us felt that
it was a cooperative theater, that it should always
be run by a group, a committee, a board of directors.
The problem was that Franklyn had a number of his friends
living in the upstairs part of the theater. Furthermore,
he withdrew all the funds from the bank and deposited
them elsewhere - no one but he knew where.

So the whole situation got very uncomfortable there
and finally it was resolved by a split. One faction
would keep the name and the other would keep the build
ing. The treasury was divided in half. Somehow or
other by this time Joyce and I and a few others had
felt that we had a kind of investment in the name of
Interplayers. We felt that that had a reputation and
that was the important thing. So we left the building
and they could take over and call themselves the Play
house, However we soon realized that people only
associated the theater with the building where these
things were done. In any case this meant that I had
to move my printing works, too.

PRINTING AT 343 FRONT

Teiser: This was in 1952?

Wilson: Yes. And at the same time I heard that Wallace Kibbee
was planning to close up on California Street and move
down to Front Street, and Lawton was going to be there.
I talked to both of them about it. And they said, "There's
some empty space there on the floor. If you want to,
you can set up here." It was understood that I would
take over the rest of Kibbee 's equipment. He was sell
ing off most of his equipment and I would buy what was
left.

Teiser: Was that when Wally Kibbee (the son) went over to Sau-
salito?

Wilson: I think it was just before that. Wally hadn't set up

in the greeting card business in Sausalito, but I think
the Kibbees had that in mind as a long range plan.

As it worked out then it was a very nice arrange
ment. Not only did I have Wallace's aunport and tyr>e
and all his background, of course, but Lawton was next
door. He was constantly helpful and he was always on

Wilson: hand when I ran into trouble with the Kelly press.
(Laughter) It was a very nice situation there for
a couple of years.

Teiser: You were then your own compositor and pressman, both?

Wilson: Yes. I even had to ,1oin the International Typographical
Union, since I was working ao closely with other union
printers. No questions about my never having completed
a six-year apprenticeship were asked. But the problems
started to come up when Wallace found the business was
too taxing. He was reaching the age of retirement. So
he decided to sell his business to his brother, Roy.
Roy was a very different sort of person. He was a gay
bon vivant, but not terribly interested in the business.
He liked to play golf and so on.

He took over what at the time was a very good busi
ness. The agreement was that he could use my type, in
cluding the type I was buying from Wallace at that time.
Wallace gradually passed out of the picture and Roy was
in. We always got along very well. He was a capable
printer but he didn't have much idealism, or the dignity
that Wallace brought to his profession.

Roy really had been a compositor, or a typographer.
In other words he had an advertising typography background

Wilson: But for one reason or another he was always running

into trouble and switched from one situation to another.
He also had been superintendent of the composing room
at H. S. Crocker when it was a letterpress. We got
along very well, but then as things developed Roy brought
in a friend of his named Prank Shea. He was also a
compositor. The agreement was that Prank would set
all of Roy's type - Roy's jobs - using my type, with
the understanding that he would distribute it.

I was never terribly good at keeping up my own
distribution* Prank Just wouldn't distribute at all*
He would only set the type. Roy was the same way, when
ever distribution came up he was out nlaying golf.
(Laughter) Furthermore I was teaching classes in tyno-
graphy for the California School of Pine Arts in my
shop. The students learned to set type very fast, but
they always put it in the wrong boxes when they tried
to distribute. Half of my type was tied up in their
projects. So gradually the shop began to go downhill
and there seemed to be no way to turn it back.

A whole other aspect had developed there. I had
started designing books in about 1950 when I was still
at Hyde and Beach Streets for the University of California

Wilson: Press. This all developed because of H. Richard Archer,
who was, at the time, secretary of the Rounce and Coffin
Club in Los Angeles, He wrote me a note saying that
he had been talking to August Fruge who was taking over
after the death of Sam Parquhar as head of the Univer
sity of California Press. Fruge intended to use out
side designers rather than A. H. Tommasini who had al
ways collaborated with Farquhar. Therefore he might
need my design services. I hadn't actually done any
book designing before, except what was done in terms
of rough printers layout and so on.

I went over and saw Fruge and he liked the books
I'd done and agreed that he would give me a commission
or two. At that point I recalled my mechanical drawing
and architectural experience and I had seen enough lay
outs — especially Ward Ritchie's and A. R. Tommasini 's
for the Press-- so that I could do them easily enough.
So suddenly I was designing books on paper. The first
book I designed I actually set in tvr>e. The headings
and sample pages I would trace off and incorporate those
in the layouts. So they were typographically based
books. But as my own skill developed it wasn't necessary
any more to set type, just an occasional specimen.

Teiser: You had it in your mind.

Wilson: Yes. That brings up another aspect, which is the in
fluence of the University of California Press. Even
during the period when I was going to architecture school
at the University, I had been told by Everson, who had
been working as a janitor at the Press, of the marvel
ous library they had there. When he finished sweeping
the floors he would go up and study in the library.
This switched his whole career into doing things on
hand-made papers, the acme of perfection in press work,

Teiser: How did he happen to be working as a Janitor?

Wilson: (laughter) It was the only job he could get. He was
lucky to get it.

Teiaer: He, too, had not come up through a printing apprentice
ship?

Wilson: No. But he found his job at the University Press ex
tremely helpful because he could get tips and advice
from the people in the press room, to use on his own
hand press which he had moved into Mary Fabilli's house.
At that time (1948) Everson was starting books like
the Privacy of Speech and Tryptich for the Living, using
Mary's marvelous fine-line linoleum cuts. We were in
constant contact. Every week we would see each other

Wilson: in one way or another at dinner parties. This was all
very interesting, Everson got a Guggenheim Fellowship
then on the basis of his poetry. He was printing and
I was printing. It seemed like there was a tremendous
flowering here of all these things coming together.
I would go up to the library at the University Press
and browse and study myself. Then, of course, there
was also the Rare Book Room of the Main Library of the
University in Berkeley. I visited it once in a while.
I saw books like the Kelmscott Chaucer and my first
Ashenden Bible and some of those tomes of the private
press movement. So that it was a period of awakening.

UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA PRESS

Wilson: As I continued to do designs for Frugfe at the Univers
ity Press he gradually got interested in having me
come over there as a resident book designer. It was
at the time when I couldn't see the light any more in
the Front Street situation. So one day Fruge called
and asked if I'd care to come over and discuss being
a designer for the Press. I thought this would be a
tremendous learning experience, really: this whole
question of how to deal with large organizations when
you don't have any personal contact with the people
that are doing the work. You have to plan everything
in advance. In the Press itself you were up against
all kinds of personalities, like A. R. Tommasini, from
whom I had already learned much. In fact this would
be rather different from a one man situation.

The other thing that bothered me at Front Street
was that despite the fact that I was doing more and
more commercial work, I wasn't doing any books. No
commissions seemed to come in for anything worth

Wilson: considering. So that was another motive in goinp to

Berkeley. At least I would be dealing with about fifty
or sixty books a year.

So I decided at that point to give it a try. I
went over. I thought at first that it would be rather
stimulating but it turned out that there were so many
internal politics — a great feud that was going on be
tween John Goetz, who was the production manager, and
the art editor who also did a lot of designs, Rita
Carroll. I was suddenly caught up in taking a side
in this feud. I'd had great respect for Goetz and I
only could support him in hia situation there. So
this immediately put Mrs. Carroll and her cohorts in
opposition. It was a very unpleasant situation because
Fruge was very partial to Rita for her ability to con
vey what she thought should be done there at the Press.
Goetz was the one who really bollixed everything, they
felt.

Teiser: He was brought in from the East, wasn't he?

Wilson: Yes, he came from New York. He was a very capable man.
Then one day when this feud was just at its height the
telephone rang and it was obvious from the conversation
that it was the head of the University of Chicago Press

Wilson: and he was offering John a Job as consultant in th«
production department there. He took it.

At the same time Jack Stauffacher had gone off
to Europe on a Fulbright fellowship as a result of
his Janson book. I thought that would be a pleasant
thing to do. (Laughter) So I decided to apply. I
applied for the Gutenberg Institute in Mainz, which
was a university and which I thought, therefore, would
be accredited by the Pulbright commission. Furthermore,
the great German type designer, Hermann Zapf, had visit
ed here for the first time. I had found out when he
was coming and met him at the airport, and we had a
very nice rapport. He was quite enthusiastic about
this idea of mine, of coming to Mainz, which was close
to Frankfurt where he lives. He thought this would
work out. But at the last minute it turned out that
the Gutenberg Institute wasn't really an accredited
institution and so I was turned down. Fortunately we
were able to manage to go on our own. By this time
I had decided to leave the University Press at the same
tim« Goetz left.

That's the amazing thing about all these peonle,
how they survive and weather all these storms. At

Wilson: first the thing that disappointed me, of course, was

that FrugA's interest really wasn't in "fine" printing.
His interest was more in a broad range of scholarly
publishing, which I think now is as it should be. De
sign was very important to him, but the physical -prop
erties of the books he was willing to keep at the level
of the better trade oublisher. Eventually all the books

were produced in large eastern book manufacturing plants,

chosen on the basis of the lowest, three bids, as re
quired by the state. It was only on special editions
that we could afford to use the University's own print
ing plant or the type which Frederic Goudy had specially
designed for it, the University of California Old Style
(now known as Calif ornian).

But there were some books produced in the Univers
ity of California Printing Department in which we all
took satisfaction, particularly the three monographs
on modern painters written by Frederick S. Wight. These
included one on my old acquaintance Morris Graves, an
other on the abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann, and
one on Arthur B. Dove. Thanks to the excellent press-
work of the Printing Department, the engravings which
came from many sources were reproduced extremely well.

Wilson: It was tremendously exciting to follow these books

through each step from the design through the order
ing of type, plates and paper to the binding.

And the paperback series which Fruge1 started at
that time had its challenges. They were mostly re
prints of books in the Press list, but some were orig
inals, like Miriam Lindstrom's Children's Art, a great
delight to work on. I continue to design for the Press
usually books which are in line with my special inter
ests, like music and the theatre. In the works cur
rently are The Mark Twain Papers in at least twenty-
seven volumes, a collaboration between the Press and
Harper & Row.

Another association with the University I should
mention: my teaching of The Development of the Book
course for the School of Librarianship in 1963. This
was a marvelous chance to get back to the Rare Book
Room, but the one hundred students who enrolled didn't
give me much time for casual browsing. Their enthus
iasm and desire to work was tremendously encouraging.
Unfortunately I had to give up the repeat of the course
in the spring of 1964 to have an open heart operation
for the replacement of my aortic valve.

Teiser: Do I remember that you didn't finish Printing for Theater
until you were in Berkeley? Was there some overlap
there?

Wilson: Yes. Toward the end of the Front Street period I'd

started on Printing for Theater. I put out the announce
ments. I had a whole flock of orders, but the commer
cial work was taking so much time that I hardly had
any time for the theater book. It was only when the
University Press situation developed that I could do
Printing for Theater at ni^ht. I finished it ten months
after I went to Berkeley.

EUROPE

'Joiner: So far as your trip to Europe in 1958 is concerned,
what was its effect upon you as a printer?

Wilson i Even though the grant hadn't oome through to study at
Mainz, I just decided to go there and see what it was
like. So we started in Holland where I still had many
relatives . Then I went to Germany with another typo-
graphic notable who had visited here once, Willem Ovink,
who is the art director of the Amsterdam Type Foundry,
the maker of the Libra type. He1 a one of the marvelous
people you meet in Europe who are vitally interested
in typography but have a tremendoua background in all
the arts - extremely literate and capable of approaching
any field with great knowledge. So we went into Ger
many with him and eventually found our way to Frankfurt
and Mainz. When we got to Mainz we were very glad we
were not committed to staying a year there. It had
been badly bombed and was very depressing. We continued
our typographic tour down through Switzerland and visited
Imre Reiner whose books have always been very exciting
to me. I remember days at the Greenwood Press when

Wilson: Jack and I used to spend every lunch hour discussing

what we thought of Reiner s specimens, his types. Reiner
was very cordial. We visited at Lugano with him and
then Mardersteig and his Offioina Bodoni in Verona.
Then we went back up through Prance.

By this time we had a daughter, Melissa, an adopted
child. We'd lost a baby in 1951, ao we decided to
adopt one. Melisaa, by this time, was nine years old
and had to go to school. It appeared that perhaps
the best place for her to go to school was in England.
I had much correspondence while I was at Berkeley with
the Cambridge University Press, in particular with John
Dreyfus who is the typographic adviser to the press.
They printed several books for the University of Cali
fornia during the period I was there. So we headed
up to Cambridge. We found a very warm reception, oarticu-
larly since John's main other interest besides typo
graphy is the theater. Also the director of the press,
Brooke Crutchley, was extremely cordial. So we decided
to spend the winter and spring in Cambridge. It worked
out at a very good period. It was just when the Univers
ity Press was beginning to work on the New English Bible.
Suddenly one day this appeared on the desk that they'd

Wilson: set up for me — I was working completely voluntarily, able

to come and go as I wanted, just to assist in some of these
special projects.

Teiser: You donated your services?

Wilson: Yes. We found a little thatched-roof cottage out in the
village of Swaffham Bulbeck, which was ideal at first,
until it came out that Joyce had to spend all her days
just keeping the coal fires going. (Laughter) So I
worked on that Bible. I simply did revisions on sample
pages that had already been approved.

Then, John Dreyfus had given a paper before the
Double Crown Club on Bruce Rogers which the press was
printing as a keepsake for the American Branch. This
interested me tremendously because the direction I was
going seemed rather parallel to Bruce Rogers' career.
He had been typographical advisor to the Press in 1Q17.
I'd met Rogers in the East, perhaps in 1954. My brother's
mother-in-law is a fine bookbinder and she'd arranged
the meeting.

Teiser: Who is she?

Wilson: Her name is Inez Pennybacker. She does fine bindings in
leather for libraries in the East. And she'd arranged

Wilson: a delightful picnic at Bruce Rogers' place in New Pair-
field, Connecticut. This was less than a year before
he died. His whole manner and approach — continuing to
work on quite marvelous books even at the time he was
84--was a tremendous inspiration. So I worked on the

Bruce ^ogera book which Dreyfus had written, Bruce Rogers

&_ Dr
and American Typography it was called; and also on0thi

project of analyzing early type specimens. With the aid
of a high-powered microscope and endless hours of re
search into old type specimens we were able to identify
the sources of many of the types that Plantin used--things
right from the very beginning of printing. This was put
out after I left the press. It really was orginally a
Stanley Morison project. He wrote the introduction to
this and got it started many years before, but Dreyfus
carried it on.

Teiser: What is the title of this?

Wilson: Type Specimens Facsimiles. This, of course, put me in
touch with Morison and Beatrice Warde and Harry Carter
and some of the other notables of the English printing
world. Once again, extremely scholarly, literate, brilliant
people. Also, the director of the Oxford University Press,
Vivian Ridler, who is a charming man with perhaps a more

Wilaon: contemporary view of things. There's a difference,

of course, between type scholars and those who are try
ing to push the frontiers, which I feel Ridler is, with
in the strict limits of the Oxford University Preas,

Also, at the Cambridge University Press was a genu
ine type designer, John Peters, who had designed a couple
of types, Petrus and Castellar, which Mackenzie & Harris
has recently imported here. So I really had a chance
to see how a type designer goes about developing his
designs and rendering them and then criticizing them once
they are cut and adapting them to other sizes. I did
get a pretty thorough acquaintance with contemporary pro
cedures for type designing.

Teiser: How many months were you there?

Wilson: I was there for the better part of six months.

At the same time, a few days a week I would go out
to the workshop of David Kindersley, who had been Eric
Gill's partner in his stone cutting business»-monumental
inscriptions, primarily in slate. Also there was Will
Carter and his wonderful family in Cambridge — also stone
cutting, and excellent printing. Will let me use his ->ress
to print our Swaffham Bulbeck letterheads.

Teiser: You mentioned this in the Book Club Quarterly article that

Teiaer: you wrote on your travels didn't you?*

Wilson: Yes. So thia gave a whole other dimension to the world
of letters. Of course, there was also the theater world
which we partook of in London on week-ends.

* Quarterly News Letter « Summer 1959. Reprinted in

expanded form in Book Design and Production (England),
vol. 2, no. 3 and 4, 1959; vol. 3, no. 1, I960.

DESIGNING AND PRINTING AT TUSCANY ALLEY

Wilson: When I came back, instead of going back into the job nrint-
ing business, which I'd really intended or to the Univers
ity Press, I decided to set un the studio here at Tuscany
Alley and specialize in book design and not to accept
any commerical job printing work. It had just been too
apparent during the Front Street period that you could
be completely swamped with this. At least, ,1 could,
(Laughter) and never do anything that I thought was signif
icant or very lasting. This seemed to work out quite well*.
the present situation being that I do designs for publish
ers in many places. But so much depends on the interpre
tation or adhering to specifications, which is the pro
ductions manager's responsibility.

One other nice thing developed while I was at Cam
bridge. The Printing for Theater book had gotten into
the A.I.G.A. Fifty Books of the Year. In the course of
its being covered by Publisher's Weekly magazine they ask
ed David Glixon, who is one of the functionaries of the
Limited Editions Club (he does most of the editorial work

Wilson: on the books— organizing the manuscripts for the printer — )
to review the show. He was wildly enthusiastic about
Printing for Theater. So I wrote him a letter of thanks
for his kind words and he wrote back and said that h«
hoped that I might stop in at the offices sometime. We
did as we went through New York on our way to Europe. They
said they hoped some day I would have some commissions
with the Limited Editions Club. I hadn't realized when
I got to Cambridge that John Dreyfus was the European ad
visor for Limited Editions. One time John went off to
Paris and a few days later a wire arrived at our little
cottage in Swaffham Bulbeck saying, "Would you please
come to Paris and discuss with us the design of some books
for the Limited Editions Club?" This was from Helen Macy,
the head of the company and widow of George Macy, its
founder, a charming woman. So that's how my association
with them began, with the conference in Paris, and I was
commissioned to work with an illustrator there on Joseph
Conrad's Nostromo.

Furthermore I was asked to design Tristan and Iseult.
for which the illustrations had already been done. This
book was eventually printed by Clarke ft Way in New York,
but Nostromo we managed to have done in San Francisco by

Adrian Wilson with his daughter Melissa
and Haywood H. Hunt at a party at Lawton
Kennedy's printing office in May 1961.

Photograph by Ruth Teiser
Reproduction rights reserved

Wilson: Taylor & Taylor, the last book printed by that noble

firm. Since then I have designed for Limited Editions
Club The Oresteia of Aeschylus, Nietzshe's Thus Spake
Zarathustra. and now Christopher Marlowe; Pour Plays.
The printing of these has been done in the New York
area, the first by A. Colish, who did some of Bruce Ro
gers1 books like his World Bible, and other two by Clarke
& Way or The Thistle Press as they style themselves in
honor of Bruce Rogers.

Teiser: When did you set up here at Tuscany Alley?

Wilson: This was about January, I960. As soon as we got back
from Europe I started having the studio built here in
what had been a work area. I didn't really know how
things would develop. Eventually I felt very lonely
without a press. I got the Kelly, which was in storage,
reassembled again and gradually took on a book or two.

Teiser: But you1 re printing very little and designing more?

Wilson: That's right, especially for Lane (Sunset Books) and vari
ous university presses. Although right now I've been
printing steadily for about three months.

Teiser: Book Club work?

Wilson: Yes. Horatio Alger's The Young Miner; or, Tom Nelson in
California.

-.. • •

Teiser: And you're finishing that and going off to Europe?

Wilson: That's right.

Teiser: How long will you be gone?

Wilson: Just one month. The project this time is to collect
material for a book called the Design of Books, which
Reinhold, the graphic arts publisher, has commissioned
me to write. In an advance way, I think, it will dis
cuss the problems of designing many kinds of books. Origin
ally I intended it to be a complete elementary textbook,
which would try to become advanced in its later stages.
But I'm restricted to 160 uages. At the same time, one
of the leading American book designers, Marshall Lee, has
put out a book called Bookmaking and he's apparently done
a very good job of covering preliminaries and all the things
a book designer should know. Fortunately I feel free to
go off into the more interesting problems. (Laughter)

This book was the result of one of the most interest
ing commissions I've had, which was working with Lawrence
Halprin, the landscape architect, on his book called Cities.

Teiser: Who printed that?

Wilson: That was printed in the East, published by Reinhold and
loaded with marvelous photographs. We must have combed

Wilson: through three or four thousand photographs in order to
find the five hundred which are in the book. I used a
rather Swiss approach to the design in this case, a modu
lar system that would take into account the different
shapes of photos that you get from the Rolleiflex and with
thirty-five millimeter film. But it was working in a
rather different way than I have on more traditionally
based books,

Teiser: Can you think of any other subject that should be dis
cussed?

Wilson: I still feel that there's a tremendous gap between de
signing a book and then having it taken by the publisher
and adapted and used as he wants. Mow in cases like work
ing with John Goetz of the University of Chicago Press,
I have confidence that he will carry through whatever I
say.

Teiser: Have you designed books for him?

Wilson: I've designed many books for Chicago. Usually they come
out quite well because he's there to see that things are
done as I say they should be. We understand what we're
working for, and it is a generally high standard of book-
making. Other publishers are constantly tampering with
design. In particular, some of them have spurious notions

Wilson: of what will sell, which definitely gets in the way of
a book which has any unity,.

This brings up the matter of consulting, something
I am being asked to do more and more* One of my most
stimulating assignments was as one of a group of con
sultants on the design of The World Book Encyclopedia
for the Field Enterprises in Chicago. Each of us was
asked to do a critique of the encyclopedia and then to
meet in Chicago to discuss our recommendations. Among
the panel were Saul Bass, Ralph Eckerstrom of the Con
tainer Corporation, our old friends Hermann Zapf, A. R.
Tommasini who originally inspired the idea with a speech
he made in Chicago, Bradbury Thompson, Alvin Eisenman,
etc.... in other words some of the top graphic design and
production people in the world. But so far they have
done little about our suggestions. And that is the
problem with consulting: one's lack of control over which
of one's ideas will be implemented and how they will be
interpreted.

Teiser: What was your feeling about the Och book for the Cali
fornia Historical Society?

Wilson: Well, that was quite a simple Job to produce, but it
again brought me face to face with the problems of

Wilson: working with a large printer, who didn't have any basic
understanding of fine books, even if he had a plant
which would perhaps employ a thousand or more people.
He had no standards of letter spacing or fine presswork.
But I think as a commercially made book it came out
quite satisfactorily. It was just a different kind of
thing from what one handles himself* So I'm toying now
with a change of policy in which I will have complete
control of the production of every book I handle.

Teiser: Will it be possible?

Wilson: Well, it will simply restrict what books I do, but I've
never had the problem of too little work. (Laughter)

Teiser : Restricted to people whom you have worked with, or to
places that you can reach physically, or both?

Wilson: People I have worked with previously, I suppose. But,

controlling the sources of supply myself, so that we can
insure we get the paper as specified and so on— which
may end up with me doing my own printing again!

PINE PRINTERS OP NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE

Lecture delivered by Adrian Wilson,
September 14, 1965» as first of the
series "Pine Printers and the Book
Collector, " University of California
Extension, Morgan Hall, Berkeley

FINE PRINTERS

AND THE
BOOK COLLECTOR

A series of evening lectures for the librarian, teacher, collector,

and others who wish to know about fine printing, the sources of

fine books, and the collectors and collections of fine books in

California. (* Tuesday, September 14: FINE PRINTERS

OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1934 (** Adrian ai

Wilson, San Francisco printer who has contributed much to the

art of fine printing in California and the West (*> Tuesday,

September 21: FINE PRINTERS OF SOUTHERN CALI- nes

FORNIA <*> Jacob Zeitlin, Los Angeles authority on the art

of the book, and one of the founders of the Rounce & Coffin

Club which sponsors the annual Exhibition of Western Books ine

(*> Tuesday, September 28: SOURCES OF LOCAL AND
OTHER FINE PRINTERS' WORK m* Glen Dawson, Los
Angeles bookseller and publisher of western Americana, whose
firm has long been associated with fine printing (*> Tuesday,
October 5: COLLECTORS, COLLECTIONS, AND USE
OF COLLECTIONS OF FINE PRINTING IN CALI
FORNIA <*> Richard H. Dillon, author, and librarian of the
Sutro Library, San Francisco, which houses a distinguished col
lection of old and rare books, including many examples of fine r
printing <%j 101 Morgan Hall, University of California, Berke
ley campus; 8 p.m. <r> Tuition: Series $8, students $4. (No
refunds after the program starts.) Single admissions $2.50, stu
dents $1.50. (Single admissions sold only at the door.) <9* Pre
sented by Continuing Education in Librarianship, University of
California Extension, and the School of Librarianship, Uni
versity of California, Berkeley <*> For further information call
THornwall 5-6000, extension 4559.

University Extension
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

APPLICATION FOR ENROLLMENT

Please mail to University of California Extension, Berkeley, California 94720

Enclosed is a check made payable to The Regents of the University of California in the

amount of $ to cover _... enrollment(s) at $8, general, and/or

enrollment(s) at $4, student, for the series FINE PRINTERS AND THE BOOK COL
LECTOR, Berkeley campus, beginning September 14, 1965.

Name.

last first middle

Address

street

city and ZIP code

Daytime telephone

Anyone who agrees to give a lecture on fine printing
illustrated with slides must have a sense of awesome re
sponsibility, for he is following in the steps of Bnery
Walker. It was his lantern slide lecture in 1886 which
inspired William Morris to found the Kelmscott Press, and
thus the whole modern movement of private and not-so-private
presses. Might someone in this room be moved to start a
similar adventure? Would I want to be accountable for the
inevitable ink-encrusted fingers, late night stands at the
press, reams of ruined paper, damaged eye-sight and financial
brinkmanship? For it is a fact that once printing ink flows
in the veins, the addiction is worse than demon rum! Fortunes
can be consumed, wives and children sucked into the mania, all
the graces of civilized living forgotten with only a lead mine
of worn type and perhaps an AIGA Medal or honorary degree as
a reward. So if you will all promise not to try to emulate
any of the feats of daring, any of the profiles in madness I
am going to describe or show you, I will continue. Just
treasure the books which have been created by the stout little
band of Northern California fine printers and offer a prayer
every night that they will carry on despite computers, tele
vision, offset lithography, death and taxes.

But why has my talk been titled "Fine Printers of Northern

California Since 1934"? In that year appeared under the im
print of the Book Arts Club of the University of California
a book by Louise Farrow Barr titled Presses of Northern
California and their Books 1900-1933. Of course I was still
In my knickers then, with not a trace of whiskers on my chin,
but I have been grateful to this book since I first became
seriously Interested in printing, for giving me an inkling
that there could be idealism in the field, that the fine book
printing in California was almost a "movement," and that there
might be a place for me in it* It also gave rise to the
spurious notion that there might be a good living in it,
something which still has to be proven.

The presses Included with full-scale bibliographies in
Mrs. Barr's book number sixteen, chosen because they had
printed "at least one bona fide book or pamphlet*" Of these,
two turn out to be publishing enterprises whose books were
printed elsewhere (mainly by the Grabhoras). Others were the
avocations of a retired high school English teacher, a retired
realtor, a retired zoology professor, a practicing lawyer and
the director of publications at a college. They had names
like The Press in the Forest and The Eucalyptus Press, because
it was in a eucalyptus grove and The Old Garret Press (guess
whyi ) and specialized in the travel Journals or random writings

of their proprietors, with occasional forays into reprints of
magazine articles. Their titles ranged from "Tire tracks on
English Roads; an account of how Spike and I discover England
by 'I'"; or "The acre of the earth turner and whatso the tale
tells of the master's life-days and undying in the valley of
the orchards and that land of the wondrous sun"; or "Jacqueline
of the very near, which is her book and path to the edge of
the earthless acres and to the wall at the wind's end" (27
copies on Tuscany paper); to "Fidgety People" and "What Be
comes of all the Pins..o," Whimsical Reprints No. 1 and 2
from Harpers magazine of 1851. There are also listed without
descriptions some ventures which had printed only ephemera,
like the Churchmouse Press, the Longacre Press which had done
"The Night Before Christmas" in miniature and the Lilliputian
Press, "a friendship press, printing greeting cards, announce
ments, and letterheads." The two University Presses in the
area, those of California and Stanford, are omitted, "not
because of any lack of quality in their work, but rather
because of the variation in aim and scope of their books as
compared with the books of the presses concerned. The result
is a study of two kinds of presses, the private press and the
press which produces fine books," i.e., books conceived in a
non- commercial spirit, although it is hoped they will pay for

themselveso Today, I feel, at least some of the University
productions deserve to be included, both for their interest
and their influence on the other presses « Certainly they
often pass the non-commercial test!

Most of the bibliographical listings in Mrs. Barr's book
are divided among three San Francisco presses: Taylor &
Taylor, John Henry Nash, and the Grabhorn Press, 150 items
each. The Windsor Press of the Johnson Brothers and Johnck
& Seeger — which has a later manifestation in the Black Vine
Press of Harold Seeger, Albert Sperisen and Lawton Kennedy-
follow with 40 and 25 books respectively. There are also
short listings for Helen Gentry, who soon moved to New York
and established the children's book publishing firm Holiday
House; for the Press of Thomas C. Russell, deceased three
years before; for Ricardo J. Orozco, primarily a designer of
books published by San Francisco firms such as Paul Elder &
Oo.'s Tomoye Press; and for Lawton Kennedy who had Just-
established a shop in San Francisco, despite the times. It
was the depths of the depression.

There is no hint in the Barr book that the depression
was affecting any of these San Francisco printers. They all
appear in these pages to be prospering as ever, with patrons
clamoring for them to accept commissions. John Henry Nash

is reported to be working on the Vulgate Bible, St. Jerome's
Latin translation, and "estimates that it will take him about
twelve years to completeo" In 1932 he had issued a pros
pectus in elephant folio size, with the title page bearing
his name latinized as lohannus Henri cus Nashus, printed on
specially made Van Gelder paper carrying his monogram and
name in watermark, and bound in marbled boards with vellum
spine lettered in gold, all in a slip case in marbled boards.
The price was to be $1000. One of his first paid-up sub
scribers was Mrs. Edward L. Doheny, and Nash got off a gift
and a typical broadside to his patroness, set in 24 pt.
Cloister type: "I, John Henry Nash, printer of San Francisco,
hereby certify and attest that this is the veritable & first
set of printer's rough stone proofs of my master undertaking,
The Vulgate, or St» Gerome, Bibleo And I further testify that
the first and only complete set of rough proofs... was assembled
for the purpose of presentation to my very good friend and
esteemed patron, Mrs* Edward L. Doheny. ..Many of my friends,
and many critics and bibliophiles both at home and abroad, have
been good enough to express a belief that some of the work my
hands have produced during more than forty-five years at case
& stone and press will achieve such immortality as destiny
may be expected to allot to the always perishable works of

man... If it does, it will follow that the Nash Bible, the
most monumental and ambitious of all my undertakings—as it
was with Gutenberg, Estienne, Baskerville, Co bd en- Sanderson-
will take its place as an outstanding example of my work. In
such case, these first proof sheets, forerunners, outriders,
of the major opus, will be unique, and worthy of this dedi
cation in admiration and gratitude to Mrs* Edward L» Doheny. "
Unfortunately, with the declining stock market, Mrs. Doheny
was forced to withdraw her patronage and Nash was forced to
withdraw from his quarters and magnificent library in the top
of the John Henry Nash building, on which you can still see his
name at 445 Sansome Street. Nash accepted a post at the Uni
versity of Oregon, which had previously honored him with the
Doctor of Letters Degree. But Nash's impact on San Francisco
printing still persists in the perfection of craftsmanship,
the attention to spacing, and the incredibly good presswork
he exacted from his collaborators. We could use more of his
perfectionism but as for his super-salesmanship???

The firm of Taylor & Taylor, with whom Nash was associated
from 1911 to 1915, had been doing distinguished books in San
Francisco since the turn of the century, but with a classical
simplicity and restraint. Perhaps this tendency was reinforced
by the younger of the Taylor brothers, who had studied

typographic design with D. B. Updike at the Harvard School of
Business Administration,, And indeed there was a similarity
between Updike's Merrymount Press in Boston and the Taylor
& Taylor establishment, both of which I had a chance to com
pare in 1948. There was the same emphasis on the library, on
the tools of research being a vital part of the printer's
operation. There was a dignified, well-ordered, highly pro
fessional atmosphere. It is expressed clearly in "A Statement
of Policy of This House" issued by Taylor «fe Taylor as long
ago as 191 6, but closely adhered to until the closing of the
firm a few years ago. "The printer.. .should be deliberately
selected as being specially qualified, and not chosen among
a number of bidders on a set of specifications.. .We aim to
charge fair prices and to plan each piece of work within a
reasonable cost... the policy of getting competing bids is
subversive of good taste and good work and is destructive...
Printing is not a mere commodity. It is an art as well;
because the creative element enters into every piece of
printed matter. It is an art that must be practiced as a
business. "

This approach brought as customers many of the major
San Francisco corporations and cultural institutions for their
special work, annual reports, anniversary books, museum

catalogues requiring the careful printing of art reproductions.
Pine book printing was by no means a staple of the firm, al
though the typographic interest was still strong enough to
produce a magnificent type specimen book in 1937. By the time
I became acquainted with the firm, the Taylor brothers had
retired and it was in the hands of a long-time associate,
James Elliott, a very capable designer, Robert Washbish, and
a Mr. Buckley, the superintendent. The full-color publications
of Standard Oil and P.G. and E. kept a large pressroom humming.
Most typesetting was done "outside" in trade composition
houses, like Mackenzie & Harris, and occasionally fine books
were produced for The Book Olub of California, private patrons
and finally, its last book, for the Limited Editions Olub of
New York. Standard Oil, heeding the cost accountants and
exponents of the three-bid system, decided to switch its
publications to the offset-lithography process. Elliott and
Washbish, seeing the handwriting on the wall, decided against
converting to lithography and sold the plant to Filmer Bros.,
a commercial book printer or more accurately "book manufac
turer, " capable of competent work but lacking that taste and
perfectionism which constitutes fine printing.

The third press described at length in Mrs. Barr's study,
the Grabhorns, had by 1934- printed a fantastic number of

charming and noble volumes: The Letter of Amerigo Vespucci,
which the AIGA awarded its gold medal, the Aesop fables, The
Santa Fe Trail, and the Leaves of Grass of Walt Whitman, Many
of these books were illuminated by hand or carried blocks cut
by the artist Valenti Angelo, giving them the tremendous vigor
of fifteenth century printing. The types were almost always
handset in a tremendous variety of styles (Koch, Goudy), the
paper was handmade and often damped before printing, the
sheets were handfolded and the books were bound on the pre
mises, usually in decorated papers created by themselves, or
once, for the Whitman, in one-fourth inch Philippine mahogony
boards with a rugged leather spine, the work of William Wheeler.

I should like to read a short section from an article I
wrote for the California Librarian on the Grabhorn Press. It
was handset and printed by them and used as an insert in the
April 1962 issue.

In Grabhorn books there is a sense of great
space and time, of boundless resources, like the
American West Itself. Somehow it is possible for
the Grabhorns to lavish on every volume breath
taking margins, extra colors, kaleidoscopic com
binations of display types, large text types (1 8
pt. handset where any printer who employs an
accountant would use 10 pt. linotype) and vigorous
initials from the hands of artists like Valenti
Angelo, Mallette Dean, and Jo Sinel. Always there
is the surprise of a gift, the presentation of
something far behond expectation.

The Grabhorns are first of all book printers,
then book collectors . Edwin collects also paintings
and Japanese prints. Bookkeepers they are only in
extremis. Their work has an opulence which recalls
the Bonanza Kings and the Three Kings of the Orient.
The Grabhorn is a horn of plenty, which always stops
short of being overblown. Its product has grandeur
which never seems excessive, standing squarely in
the great tradition of printing.

But perhaps it would be easier to continue this description,
which is after all of a visual and tactile experience with the
help of some slides. ..

Printers whose work was shown in slides:
The Grabhorn Press
Lawton Kennedy, Printer
Mallette Dean
Arlen Philpott
Andrew Hoy em

Jack Stauffacher (The Greenwood Press)
William and Barbara Holman
Henry Evans

Lewis and Dorothy Allen
Adrian Wilson

University of California Press
A. R. Tommasini
James Robertson
Taylor & Taylor
Brother Antoninus
Roger Levenson (Tamalpais Press)

Quoted during slide showing: part of article by Adrian Wilson
on Lawton Kennedy, Printer, printed by Kennedy and used as an
Insert in the California Librarian, October 1962.

To see Lawton Kennedy in action in his orderly,
modern printing office is highly deceptive. There
is nothing to account for his exceptional level of
production in his unhurried movement between the type
banks, in his contemplative stance as he surveys a
locked-up form at the gleaming imposing stone, or in
his nonchalent perch at the controls of a heaving,
fire-spitting cylinder press* In fact, Lawton seems
to prefer to leave the monsters to roar at each other
while he launches into a salty sermon on shoddy work
manship. But let there be a break in the rhythm of
the presses, a whiff of ink drying improperly, a hint
that the systematic progress of the work may be
interrupted, then the printer is there with a pene
trating glance, a turn of the hand, a word. The in
stinctive anticipation of the vagaries of machinery
has become second nature with him, as has the sense
of when to do one thing so that another will happen
in correct sequence weeks or months later* These
skills have resulted from years of striving to
discipline materials to good design, from day-to-day
coping with all varieties of printing surfaces, types,
presses, papers and content. That there has been no
erosion of standards and enthusiasms along the way is
testimony to an extraordinary individuality and
fortitude. Lawton Kennedy is one of five brothers
who in 1913 began their long printing careers by
printing the church bulletin and order of services
for their father, Alfred J. Kennedy, who at the time
was a Congregational minister. Pour of them found
their way into the printing industry in the East Bay.
Lawton Kennedy came to San Francisco, working first
in association with Johnok. Kibbee & Co., and later
printing for John Henry Nash, while with Thomas
Beatty. With the former in 1926 his fame for im
peccable presswork became widespread, for he printed
on a formidable handmade paper and by cylinder press
an edition of The Rubalyat of Omar Khayyam. Through
out he maintained a precarious balance between the

100

blackest solids and most delicate lines of Illus
trations and type. Printers were still talking
about it when I arrived on the scene twenty years
later. That it was not a momentary tour-de-foroe,
but the result of solid experience and carefully
reasoned principle, came out in a famous Roxburghe
Club debate which Lawton held with Wilder Bentley
of the relative merits of hand vse machine press*
It is his belief, expressed so vigorously then, in
coming to terms with modern methods and equipment,
his purging of romanticism, hocus-pocus and in
efficiency that has made Kennedy's press outstanding
in Western bookmaklng today.

Conclusion after slides: ,

As you will have noted, running through all these presses,
as a constant leaven, is The Book Club of California. Somehow
through its agents planted in all corners of the state, it was
always aware when a new press capable of meeting its standards
was started and when it was most in the need of a commission.
The extraordinary policy of the Club is that it gives the
printer complete freedom: to choose which illustrator or
illustrations to use, what format would be best, and what
style of binding would be most appropriate. This kind of con
fidence excites in the printer an enormous enthusiasm for the
job, sometimes more than the budget reasonably allows; and is
responsible, I think, for the amazing level of its books, now
numbering 120. How refreshing it is to work with such an
organization after wrestling with commercial publishers, with

101

all their quibbling and manipulation, all in the spurious

interest of sales.

There is a Grabhorn Press story which illustrates the

point:

A fluttery young woman came into the press and asked
Ed the price of a "Cabeza de Vaca. " Ed said "Twenty
dollars.," She gasped and said, "What can possibly
be put into a book to make it worth twenty dollars?"
Ed got that far-away look and answered, "Lady, all
my heart's blood and my life's best dreams." She
paid and left without a word.

102

PARTIAL INDEX

103

Actor's Workshop, 60

Aeschylus, The Oresteia. 83

Aesop, fables of, (Grabhorn Press), 97

Alger, Horatio, The Young Miner; or Tom Nelson In

California. 83

Allen, Dorothy and Lewis, 98

American Institute of Graphic Arta (A.I.G.A.), 43-44
Anderson, Tom, 49, 53-54
Angelo, Valenti, 97
Archer, H. Richard, 66

Barr, Louiae Parrow, greases of Northern California

and their Bo oka 190i -1933. 90-92
Bass, Saul, 86
Baatty, Thomas, 99
Bentley, Wilder. 100
Bianchi, John, 47
Black Vine Press, 92

Blumenthal, Joseph (New York printer), 46
Book Club of California, 55-56, 96, 100
Brother Antoninus, SEE William Sverson
Broughton, James, 33, 38; Songs for Certain Children.

39-41

Bruce, John, 33
Bufano, Beniamino (Benny), 32

California Librarian (article on Grabhorn Press), 97

Cambridge University Press, 76-79

Carlberg, Glory Palm, 31-32

Carroll, Rita, 70

Carter, Harry, 78

Carter, Will, 79

Chase, Waldo, 25

Christopher Marlowe; Four Plays. 83

Clarice and Way (The Thistle Press), 82-83

Oolish, A. (New York printer), 83

Compass. The. 14, 17-1 8, 25, 52

Conrad, Joseph, Nostromo. 82-83

Conscientious Objector Camps, in WoWe II, 9-22

Crutchley, Brooke, 76

Cur ran, Homer, 60

104

Davis, Mrs. Lulu, 34

Dean, Mallette, 97-98

Doheny, Mrs. Edward L. , 93-94

Dove, Arthur Bo, 72

Dreyfus, John, 76-77; Bruoe Rogers and American

Typography. 78; Type Specimens FacslrnlTesTYS; 82
Duncan, Robert, 33

Eckerstrom, Ralph. 86
Elsenman, Alvin, 86

Elder, Paul and Co. (Tomoye Press), 92
Elliott, James, 96
Erie, Broad us, 20
Eshelman, William, 27
Eucalyptus Press, The, 90
Evans, Henry, 98

Everson, William (Brother Antoninus), 14-17, 27, 33,
67-68, 98

Fabilll, Mary, 33» *3t 67
Parquhar, Samuel, 66
Fellowship of Reconciliation, 4, 9
Ferrier Theater, 23

fifteen Letters of Goethe. 48
llmer Bros, (printer), 96

Firehouse Repertory Theater (San Francisco), 35
Franklyn, Roy, 61-62
Fruge, August, 66, 69-70, 72-73

Gantner, Neilma, The Story of the Wayfarer and the

Seafarer. 53-55
Gentry, Helen, 92

Gerstle, Sara, Four Ghost Stories. 56
Gilkerson, Ralph, 45

Gill, Eric, And Who Wants Peace. 43; 79
Gleditsch, Arthur Bo, 23
Glixon, David, 81-82
Goetz, John, 70-71 > 85
Goudy, Frederick, 72
Graves, Morris, 25* 72
Grabhorn, Edwin, 98, 101
Grabhorn Press, 30-32, 90, 92, 96-98, 101
Grabhorn, Robert, 31
Greenwood Press, 39-41, 43-47, 52, 75, 98

105

Halprln, Lawrence, pities. 84

Harper and Row (publishers), 73

Harris, Carroll, 40

Hart, James Do, 56

Harth, Alice, 38

Harvey, Robert, 20

Hedgerow Theater, 19, 22, 61

Hobart,- John, 33

Hofmann, Hans, 72

Holman, William and Barbara, 98

Holub, Leo, 51

Hoyem, Andrew, 98

Ibsen, Ghosts, 21
Illlteratl. 26-27
ins/outs, Hyman Swetzoff, 38
Interplayers, The, 50-51, 62

Jackson, Joseph Henry, 56
James, Clayton and Barbara, 25
Johnck, Klbbee and Co«, 99
Johnck and Seeger (compositors), 92

Kael, Pauline, 4l

Kelmscott Press, 139

Kennedy, Alfred, 57

Kennedy, Freda, 57

Kennedy, Lawton, 57-58, 63, 92, 98-100

Kibbee, Roy, 64-65

Klbbee, Wallace Jr., (Wallie), 53. 63

Kibbee, Wallace Sr. (lithographer), 53-55, 63-64

Klndersley, David, 79

Koeppler, Jack, 51-52

Kowalsky, John, 49, 51

Lancaster, Joyce, 20-22, 24, 25t 30-31, 41 , 46,

57, 58, 61, 62, 77

Lane (publishers of Sunset Books), 83
Lang, Wilfred, 25
La Paris lenne. 61

106

Lee, Marshal, Bookmaking. 84

Letter of Amerigo Vespucci* The (Grabhorn Press), 97

Levenson, Roger ( Tamalpais Press ) , 98

Limited Editions Club of New York, 81-83, 96

Lind strom, Miriam, Children's Art. 73

Lurle, Louis, 60

Mackenzie and Harris (typographers), 39, 79» 96

Macy, Helen, 82

Mann, Walter, 48-49

Mark Twain Papers. The. 73

Merrymount Press, 46-47, 95

Miller, Henry, 27

Mining and Hunting in the Par West. 43-44

Morison, Stanley, 78

Morris, William, 89

Mullican, Lee, 48

My Pirst Publication. 56

Nash, John Henry, 90, 92-94, 99

New Directions. 16-17

Nletzshe. Dhus Spake Zarathustra. 83

No Exit (Sartre), 30, 33

Nomland , Kemper, 27

Odom, Ralph, 24

Old Garret Press, The, 90

Orozco, Ricardo J« (book designer), 92

Ovink, Willem, 75

Pacific Music Press, 29-30, 35t 57

Patchen, Kenneth, 27

Pendle Hill (Quaker graduate center), 22

Pennybacker, Inez (bookbinder), 77-78

Peters, John (type designer), 79

Philpot, Arlen, 98

Phoenix Press, 49, 52, 54

Phoenix Too Frequent* 58

Playhouse, The, 62

Ponch, Martin, 14-15, 17, 19-20, 26, 34-35

Portfolio of Book Club Printers. A. 43

Press in the Forest, The, 90

Printing for Theater. 31, 74, 81-82

•of Speech (William Everson), 67

107

Quakers (activities during W.W. II), 9-42

Rainer, Kurt, 29

Reiner, Imre, 75-76

Reinhold (publisher), 84

Rexroth, Kenneth, 26-27, 32

Ridler, Vivian, 78-79

Ritchie, Ward, 16, 66

Robertson, James, 98

Rogers, Bruce, 77-78; World Bible. 83

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The (printed by Lawton

Kennedy), 99-100
Russell, Thomas G«, Press, 92

San Joaquin Poems (William Everson). 16

Santa Fe Trail, fee (Grabhorn Press), 97

Seeger, Harold, 92

Shea, Frank, 65

Sheets, Kermit, 25-28

Sinel, Jo (artist), 97

Sperisen, Albert, 92

SPice Islands Cook Book. The. 38

Spivock, Charles, 59-60

Stackpole, Ralph, 32

Stauffacher, Jack (The Greenwood Press), 39-48, 71,

76, 98

Stevenson, Robert Lewis, San Francisco. 56
Swetzoff, Hyman, 38, 52
Synge, Well of the Saints. 58

Taylor and Taylor (printers), 83, 92, 94-96, 98

Thompson, Bradbury, 86

Tommasini, A. R., 66, 69, 86, 98

Tristan and Iseult. 82

Tryptich for the Living (William Everson), 67

mmm£*******m**^**i***^*^^**^^*^^f*^*^*^^^^^lr nrt

iimens Fa o similes. 78

University of California Book Arts Olub, 90

University of California Press, 66-73» 91 , 98

University of Chicago Press, 85

Unna, Warren, The Ooppa Murals. 55-56

Untide Press, 17, 27

Updike, Do Be (Merrymount Press), 95

108

Waldport Co. 0, Camp, 14-19

Walker, Baery, 89

Ward et Beatrice, 78

Washbish, Robert, 96

Wezel, Adrian Peter, 1-5

Wezel, Christine van der Goot, 2-5. 36*37

Wheeler, William, 97

Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass (Grabhorn Press), 97

Wight, Frederick 3. (monographs on modern painters), 72

Wilson, Joyce Lancaster, SEE Lancaster, Joyce

Wilson, Melissa, 76

Wilson, Norman Henry, 3

Windsor Press, The (Johnson Brothers), 92

«ine Keepsake series, ed. by Joseph Henry Jackson, 56
ood, Charles R. , 5*» 56
Woodcock, George, 32
World Book Encyclopedia. The (Field Enterprises), 86

Zapf, Hermann, 86

ablished quarterly by the Thames Publishing Company Limited, London.

A PORTFOLIO OF BOOK CLUB P R I N TE R S, 19/2-1962

Francisco. One day, while Jack was on the roof sunning himself with his in
tended, the telephone rang arv .i^Mft. D&C-rjs asked for the proprietor of the
Press. I told the lady that ?v^ Stauffacher wa^mfortunateiy engaged at the
moment, but she refu o put off, saying t^jat it concerned looking at a

led like the gpssibility of the only paying
>ld on, and scrambled up the ladder

'and out onto the gravel roof
owed office buildings. Disen-
> THE BOOK CLUB!"

» to the Press, Jack was changing

manuscript for a book Sino^fct so
job we had had in weeks, I
in the elevator shaft, throug1
with its tarry chimneys and
tangling Jack, I breathlessly to
he screamed and bolted down
By the time his beloved an
out of his short pants into his longs, combing out his black beard and extracting
his bicycle from behind the press. Jack never ventured any distance into the
financial district without his bicycle, a kind of security mechanism from his
bicycle polo years in San Mateo. But then he decided I would have to come
along to the Club and told me to put on a tie and scrub my inky fingers. As we
walked through the canyons of the Wai! Street of the West, I pumped him on
the nature of this Book Club to which we were headed. Was it an affiliate of the
Book of the Month Club, with a possible order for 100,000 copies in the
offing; or was it a vanity pubi iouse for elderly spinsters' poetry? Neither,

Jack said. The Club's interests were Caiiforniana and the history of prim
and the editions were strictly limited. They had done some poetry once . -

THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

SAN FRANCISCO

V1K^

10 a\3io xooa

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BOOK CLUB
of California came in 1948, the year I worked for the Greenwood Press, that
oasis of migrant painters, misunderstood poets, starving calligraphers and
beautiful girls which Jack Stauffacher maintained at 509 Sansome Street, San
Francisco. One day, while Jack was on the roof sunning himself with his in
tended, the telephone rang and a Mrs. Downs asked for the proprietor of the
Press. I told the lady that Mr. Stauffacher was unfortunately engaged at the
moment, but she refused to be put off, saying that it concerned looking at a
manuscript for a book. Since it sounded like the possibility of the only paying
job we had had in weeks, I asked her to hold on, and scrambled up the ladder
in the elevator shaft, through the secret trap door and out onto the gravel roof
with its tarry chimneys and backdrop of windowed office buildings. Disen
tangling Jack, I breathlessly told him the news. "It's THE BOOK CLUB!"
he screamed and bolted down the shaft.

By the time his beloved and I had descended to the Press, Jack was changing
out of his short pants into his longs, combing out his black beard and extracting
his bicycle from behind the press. Jack never ventured any distance into the
financial district without his bicycle, a kind of security mechanism from his
bicycle polo years in San Mateo. But then he decided I would have to come
along to the Club and told me to put on a tie and scrub my inky fingers. As we
walked through the canyons of the Wall Street of the West, I pumped him on
the nature of this Book Club to which we were headed. Was it an affiliate of the
Book of the Month Club, with a possible order for 100,000 copies in the
offing; or was it a vanity publishing house for elderly spinsters' poetry? Neither,
Jack said. The Club's interests were Californiana and the history of printing,
and the editions were strictly limited. They had done some poetry once, a set of

keepsakes, of which he had printed one, and the poets were mostly contempo
rary. This was a big break, he assured me, for if the job came through they
I were likely to give an advance. He might even be able to pay me again!

When we arrived at the Club room on the second floor at 549 Market Street,
it was hardly the hushed, antiquarian atmosphere I had envisioned. Trolley
cars were roaring along the four tracks on Market Street, Mrs. Downs, the
secretary, a charming, gracious lady, was fuming at the addressograph, and the
walls and cabinets were painted a fashionable brown-gray which I knew as
"elephant's breath." Mrs. Downs indicated to me a shelf of colorful tomes,
many of them lavish folios, as the Club's publications to date. While she and
Jack talked business, I browsed over these productions, my eye seizing natu
rally on a volume by a poet, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, titled Nationalism and
published in 1918. Its writing was so vivid and prophetic my opinion of the
Club immediately rose. And then, lo and behold, there was a book of poems
by my favorite writer, D. H. Lawrence, titled Fire and Other Poems and printed
by my idols, The Grabhorn Press. The Club had passed its ordeal by fire!

The book we were given to print, however, was hardly the avant-garde
poetry I had hoped— The Miner's Own Book it was called and worse, it was a
reprint. But the advance did serve to hold body and soul together and, in part,
to make the down payment on a German press. For several weeks we worked
on separate formats ... I wanted an oblong shape with the cuts in the margins
but Jack wanted to stay with the simple, vertical scheme of the original book.
Jack wisely decided on his sounder design. Then the bonanza ran out, and I
was forced to seek employment elsewhere.

In 1949 I set up a press in the lobby of the Interplayers' first waterfront
theatre and the Book Club was not long in hearing about it. Perhaps because I
had printed a celebrated beer list for the Buena Vista Cafe across the street, I
was commissioned by the Club to do a book about the murals in an earlier
Bohemian gathering place, Coppa's Restaurant. The photographs of the murals
demanded, I felt, the same oblong format I had tried to employ earlier at the

Greenwood Press. The only difficulty was that my platen press was too small to
take the paper I had already purchased, so I used the advance to make a down
payment on an enormous Kelly B Cylinder Press. Only when it was installed
did I realize I had not the faintest notion of how to set it in motion, much less
print with it a book up to Book Club standards. Some inquiry around the
printing industry revealed that the greatest exponent of the art of the cylinder
press was Lawton Kennedy, at the time resident in Oakland. I sought him out.
Equipped with all the necessary tympan papers, makeready tissues, pastes and
knives, Lawton came most graciously to my lobby press evening after evening
until I, too, was able to bring the monster to heel.

The book took its decorative motifs directly from the murals— a procession
of black cats, a latticework border and, for the cover, an eyebrow-raising scene
cut in linoleum by Mallette Dean and printed on red paper of the hue of the
original restaurant wallpaper. The type was Bruce Rogers' Centaur, my abiding
passion, and even the paper was Bruce Rogers', a special job lot bearing his
watermark which Henry Evans, bookseller and handpress printer, had dis
covered in the East. Mackenzie & Harris were the compositors and Perry G.
Davis the binder, as they have been in much of my work since that time.

A few years later when I had moved my equipment to 343 Front Street the
Club commissioned me to print a keepsake series on The Vine in Early California.
Halfway through the course, its able editor, Joseph Henry Jackson, suddenly
passed away, a tremendous loss to the world of books, and for me the loss
of a true supporter. Fortunately James D. Hart was able to complete the edit
ing of the series without hiatus.

After a sojourn as book designer at the University of California Press, during
which I completed my book Printing for Theater in the evenings, I spent a year
visiting the typographical centers of Europe, six months of it working with the
Cambridge University Press. My "Journa^s °f a Journeying Printer," heavily
expurgated by my wife, appeared in the Quarterly Newsletter, and upon my
return the books and ephemera gleaned on my travels were exhibited in the

Club rooms. Two years later, and again partially with the advance on a Book
Club commission, I was able to install the Kelly B in the garden level of my
home at One Tuscany Alley. Here I produced My First Publication, edited with
introductions by James D. Hart. Through an exchange of services I secured
from David Stone Martin, one of America's leading illustrators, twelve original
drawings of the authors at the approximate age of their first appearance in
print. This book had at least two distinctions: with its sequence of colored
papers for the introductions it was undoubtedly the most gaudy Club volume
to date, surpassing even Tie Coppa Murals', and it probably had the most tip-ins,
patiently handled by the Schuberth Bookbindery with European finesse. Upon
its publication it was exhibited at an open-house at the Club together with
some of my other recent design work: cookbooks, novels, textbooks, paper
backs, most of them in strictly unlimited editions. If there were any horrified
members, to them I say, "Vive la difference!" Such uninhibited exhibitions,
such unfettered publications, and such spirited open-houses can happen only
at The Book Club of California. Long may it prosper!

A PORTFOLIO OF BOOK CLUB PRINTERS, 1912-1962,
The Book Club of California' s^oth Anniversary Keepsake,
consists of twelve folders, each printed by or about presses associated
with the printing history of the Book Club.

MAN IN
NY ALLEY

In 1958 a tall, bcardn

actress wife an-

was Adrian Wilv>n — a

Francisco. He had been on a rypegnpiM

Europe and then »pent the wtnwi

Cambridge Li Prea an.

-\w>

country village
weather.

On his return
printing si
believed that the
it one, but mtn
known as one o^
His origu
slender and at n
Wesleyan Untv

was eventually to provide the st

c was one of a jri-
tfOKs .it a camp in Walcipon, '•>

.tiled Compass, ami W
very big an. ••».<!» ..

brndkng over a composiiu
CVM-P- ft

•
dttm. in a pri'.' '•

mo *">

IOO

Club rooms. Two years later, and again pan
Club commission^ I was able to install the
home at One Tuscany Alley. Here I produc
introductions by James D. Hart. Through a
from David Stone Martin, one of America's le
drawings of the authors at the approxii
print. This book had at least two distir
papers for the introductions it was undo
to date, surpassing even The Coppa Mural.
patiently handled by the Schuberth B
its publication it was exhibited at
some of my other recent design \\
backs, most of them in strictly unlim
members, to them I say, "Vive la differ
such unfettered publications, and such s
at The Book Club of California. Long

advance on a Book
garden level of my
blication, edited with
f services I secured
, twelve original
pearance in
colored
lume

Drawing by David Stone Martin

of Gelett Burgess for

MY FIRST PUBLICATION

A PORTFOLIO OF BOOK CLUB PRINTERS, l<)li~l()6i,
The Book Club of 'California 's jOtb Anniversary Keepsake,
consists of twelve folders, each printed by or about presses associated
with the printing history of the Book Club.

Taken From Book Design and Production, Summer 1964, Vol. 7, No. 2.
Published quarterly by the Thames Publishing Company Limited, London.

THE MAN IN
TUSCANY ALLEY

In 1958 a tall, bearded American with his charming
actress wife and daughter arrived in Britain. His name
was Adrian Wilson — a designer/printer from San
Francisco. He had been on a typographical tour of
Europe and then spent the winter working at the
Cambridge University Press and learning in a small
country village something of the rigours of British
weather.

On his return to San Francisco he set up a studio-
printing shop at Number One Tuscany Alley. It is
believed that the alley had no name until Wilson gave
it one, but certainly from this address he has become
known as one of the best printer-designers in America.
His original contacts with printing were, however,
slender and at times hilarious. He was a student at
Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut,

100

from 1941 to 1943, where he developed a passion for
the theatre and a mild interest in printing. The theatre
was eventually to provide the stimulus for his printing
activity. In 1945 he was one of a group of writers and
artists at a camp in Waldport, Oregon, which produced
a magazine called Compass, and William R. Eshclman
recalls the very big and very young Adrian Wilson
bending over a composing stone and arranging the
letters C-O-M-P-A-S-S in an appropriate semi-circle.
It had been made clear to him why this could not be
done in a primitive print shop, but he persisted in
defiance of the composing stick, poured in plaster of
paris to hold the letters in place and when dry locked
up the forme. It worked.

In 1946 he and his wife Joyce Lancaster and some
friends determined to establish a repertory theatre in

San Francisco, and a group was formed called the
'Intcrplaycrs'. Printed material was needed, and perhaps
the best way to describe the outcome is in Wilson's
own words: 'When our first productions were ready,
we needed audiences. I agreed to try to print the
announcements and programs, borrowing a small platen
press from a group of anarchists and marijuana addicts,
paper trimmings from the Grabhorn Press, and a fellow
actor from the Intcrplaycrs to play the part of the non
existent press motor. Miraculously people seemed to
like these handbills, and I soon realised I could turn
printing to account in supporting both family and the
theater'.

The next year on this press Wilson printed his first
books — a volume of poems and a children's song book
employing old stock blocks. After working for a music
printer, Wilson joined Jack Stauffacher at the Green
wood Press. Together they produced Eric Gill's And
Who Wants Peace? in a monumental format on hand
made paper using Pcrpetua type; Mining and Hunting in
the Far West and The Religion of No-Religion. Wilson's
first acquaintance with the Book Club of California
came in 1948, the year he worked for the Greenwood
Press, which he himself has described as 'that oasis of
migrant painters, misunderstood poets, starving calli-
graphcrs and beautiful girls which Jack StaufFacher
maintained at 509 Sansome Street, San Francisco'.
Again Wilson's own words are best to describe the
incident: 'One day, while Jack was on the roof sunning
himself with his intended, the telephone rang and a
Mrs. Downs asked for the proprietor of the Press. I told
the lady that Mr. Stauffacher was unfortunately engaged
at the moment, but she refused to be put off, saying
that it concerned looking at a manuscript for a book.

Since it sounded like the possibility of the only paying
job we had had in weeks, I asked her to hold on, and
scrambled up the ladder in the elevator shaft, through
the secret trap door and out on to the gravel roof with
its tarry chimneys and backdrop of windowed office
buildings. Disentangling Jack, I breathlessly told him
the news. "It's THE BOOK CLUB !" he screamed and
bolted down the shaft'.

They went off together to the Book Club's offices
and obtained an order to print The Miner's Own Book.
An advance enabled Wilson to be paid, but then the
money ran out and he was forced to seek employment
elsewhere. But the contact with the Book Club had
been important. In 1950 he set up a press in the lobby
of the Interplayers' first waterfront theatre, and the
audiences could witness typographic as well as dramatic
performances. The Book Club got to know about the
press, and they commissioned Wilson to do a book for
them. It was about the murals in an earlier Bohemian
gathering place, called Coppa's Restaurant. The photo
graphs of the murals demanded, he thought, an oblong
format, but he found that his platen press was too small
to take the paper he had already purchased. So he made
a down payment on 'an enormous Kelly B. Cylinder
Press'. Only when it was installed did he discover that
he had no idea of how to set it in motion. However,
with help from Lawton Kennedy, a great authority on
the art of the cylinder press, he 'brought the monster
to heel'. The book was called The Coppa Murals by
Warren Una, and was published in 1952. It was set in
Wilson's favourite type, Centaur.

Two years later he moved all his equipment to other
premises, and soon after moving the Book Club com
missioned him to print a keepsake series on. The Vine

SAN FRANCISCO

| 4"£jf> "^fr A it ^ Modern Cosmopolis

BY ROBERT LOUIS STIiVENSON

Pnfwh/on /> l/«rt

The double-spread title-page of San Francisco designed and printed by Adrian Wilson for the Book Club of California.
The original is printed in black and ochre. Page size is 9i" wide by 6|" deep. Lithographic reproductions were by Neal,
Stratford and Kerr and type-setting by Mackenzie & Harris Inc. The Schtiberth Bookbindery bound the book, of which 450
copies were printed

101

TKe Albion Press

The Albion Press was the ultimate perfection of the handpress

r r

used by Johann Gutenberg. Made of iron instead of wood

and activated by levers instead of a screw, it was invented about 1820

by Richard W. Cope, an engineer of London, incorporating

improvements from several iQth century presses.

Eventually the Albion became the favorite of the English private presses,

being the chief instrument of the Kelmscott, Doves and Ashendene.

Thus the Albion contributed to the typographical renaissance

of the zoth century.

1 02

Ill

Early California. Unfortunately, the editor, Joseph
Henry Jackson, died half-way through the project,
which was a tremendous loss both to the world of books
and as a friend to Adrian Wilson. Nevertheless, the
editing was completed by James D. Hart without
hiatus.

From his new premises, in the centre of the printing
industry in San Francisco, Wilson continued printing
books, playbills and catalogues, and designing books
for the University of California Press as well as the
Stanford University Press. In the next few years the
following books were selected as outstanding by the
juries for the Western Books exhibitions: The Lion of
the West and The Pollen Path (both for Stanford) ; Elec
tronic Motion Pictures; Mark Twain of the Enterprise; The
Ureterovesical Junction and the monographs, Morris
Graves, Hans Hofmann, and Arthur G. Dove which also
served as the catalogues for the national exhibitions of
these painters (all for the University of California Press);
Unity Waterman (for the Roxburghe Club); Weldon
Kccs' Poems 1947-1954, printed and published by Adrian
Wilson, and finally Printing for Theater, the story of the
Intcrplaycrs programmes, written and printed and pub
lished by their printer. This was published in 1957 and
was selected for the AIGA Fifty Books Show of 1958
and was acclaimed 'the biggest thing in the show for
page size . . . imagination and sheer quality . . .'

In 1959, after Wilson's return from Europe, a
chronicle of his trip was published in the Book Club
of California's Quarterly News Letter and also in Book
Design and Production.

His announcement that he had set up a studio for
book design at Number One Tuscany Alley brought
Wilson commissions from several publishers across
America, among them the University of Chicago. Three
of his four books in the Chicago Book Clinic's 1960
exhibit of Midwestern Bookmaking were done for the
University of Chicago. One was Greek Sculpture by Rys
Carpenter, the best book of the show. The two other
titles : Private Life of. Sherlock Holmes by Vincent Starrett
and Louis Agassiz: Life in Science by Edward Lurie. (The
former set in Bodoni, the latter in Baskerville.) Greek

Left: Part of a broadsheet (original size: 184* deep
X I2-J-* wide) printed by Adrian Wilson as a
demonstration for his course in The Development
of the Book, School of Librarianship, University of
California on the occasion of a visit by Paul A.
Bennett. The press employed was the Albion given
to the University by Roger Levenson. The type is
Centaur and the woodcut was by Mallette Dean

Sculpture was most attractive with its handsome title-
spread drawings by Ray Peterson, and the plate repro
ductions (by Enschede). The text was set in Bcmbo.

In 1961, Wilson printed My First Publication for the
Book Club of California. It was a collection of essays
by eleven notable Californian authors, present and past,
indicating how each wrote his first book. This antho
logy was edited by James D. Hart, who supplied
introductions to each essay. This book was one of
Wilson's most engaging concepts; it employed a variety
of coloured cover papers for the introductions, pen and
ink drawings of each author by illustrator David Stone
Martin, plus tippcd-in reproductions of representative
pages from the original publications. In 1962 he par
ticipated in the Club's valuable Fiftieth Anniversary
keepsake series, A Portfolio of Book Club Printers, writing
and producing one of the folders.

Limited editions have always interested Adrian
Wilson greatly, and he has designed three books for
the Limited Editions Club to date and is currently
working on another. His first, published in 1960, was
Tristan and Iseult, illustrated with a dozen paintings by
Serge IvanofF. This was set in Bembo and printed by
Clarke and Way in New York. The second commission
was to design Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, which was
published in the spring of 1961. This was first discussed
with publisher and illustrator (the Portuguese artist,
Lima de Freitas) in Paris two years earlier when the
Wilsons were in Europe. The book, illustrated with pen
drawings and set in Bulmer, was the last to be printed
by Taylor and Taylor in San Francisco, just before that
distinguished printing office closed its doors.

The next Limited Editions assignment was to design
the Oresteia of Aeschylus illustrated with a dozen
paintings by Michael Ayrton, reproduced in gravure.
This was printed by A. Colish in Mt. Vernon, and pub
lished in the autumn of 1961. The text face was the
special i8-point Janson used by Bruce Rogers in the
37-volume set of Shakespeare he planned for the Club.
For the Oresteia American Uncial was used for running
heads in conjunction with the Janson text, with a hand-
lettered Uncial by Herbert Marcelin for initials and
large display hues.

During the time Wilson was designing books for the
Limited Editions Club he was also working on other
titles. Two titles which were selected for the Fifty Books
Show in San Francisco were: The Sunset Cook Book
(Lane) ; this was in the 1960 show. It achieved a sale of
more than 100,000 copies. It was set in Times Roman
with Cochin heads, and offset-printed by Stechcr-
Traung. The other book selected for the 1961 show
was the University of California Press edition of a
classic, Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy by William
Harvey. Its handsome title-page was graced with a

103

calligraphic panel lettered by Herbert Marcclin; the
book was set in Janson and printed by George Banta Co.

As well as being a brilliant book designer and printer,
Adrian Wilson is also a very good teacher. Ten years
ago he was teaching typography and printing at the
California School of Fine Arts, and in 1961 lie prepared
a course in 'Design for Books and Printing' at the San
Francisco Art Institute as part of its summer curriculum.
He has also lectured in the School of Librarianship at
the University of California, demonstrating printing
with a hand press.

We have been able to mention only some of the
books that Adrian Wilson has produced over the years,
but in his studio in Tuscany Alley, San Francisco, he is
always looking forward to his next book. To Adrian
Wilson, book design is a creative art, and he looks for
a constant experimental approach and he probes ideas
to make each book look different. He prefers pre
planning — to design the entire book as a unit, including

jacket and binding. He enjoys a liberal use of colour
and seeks the full potential of four-colour process.

Adrian Wilson is looking ahead. He has a work on
book design about to be published, he has increasing
numbers of assignments for annual reports and anniver
sary and institutional books for major companies. In
the near future his ambition is to try his hand in pro
ducing sumptuous volumes in the French manner,
which combine original prints with a worthy text and
typography. Sample pages have been prepared for the
first item in this hoped for scries : The Works and Days
ofHcsiod, translated by Richard Lattimore, with wood-
engravings by Imrc Reiner and setting in Centaur and
Arrighi.

Despite his unorthodox entry into the world of
printing — through the stage door, as it were — Adrian
Wilson is the latest in a growing line of great American
printer-designers, not afraid to absorb ideas from
Europe, and enriching Europe with their ideas.

„ ... ^ .

afn**s a '

_ . — . . i\ i __ 4 • i

Bringing the 'monster' to heel. Adrian Wilson with his Kelly cylinder press

104

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The Castle on Russian Hill

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i^M •' I

INVENTING A PATRON

An opening of the cheffctuvre of Adrian Wilson Printing for Theater (San Francisco, 1957). Consisting of
fifty-seven generous pages, 15 J* deepxio" wide, it carries no less than twenty tipped-in announcements
and programmes printed by Wilson for the Intcrplayers. The end-papers reproduce a programme for
Hamlet, and in the binding is a pocket containing more programmes. Wilson printed 250 copies. In the
Prologue he tells how he became 'Printer to the Interplayers'. He writes: 'This sly imprimatur has appeared
on some of the printing for this theater as evidence that, though the Dukes of Parma, the Count Kesslers,
the William Andrews Clarks are gone from this world, the printer may invent his own patron'. The
original programmes tipped-in the book are vivid examples of Wilson's skill as printer and designer,
particularly when it is realised how crude at times his equipment was. The very first Intcrplayers' announce
ment (1947) was printed on a hand-operated Challenge-Gordon press in the tool-shed of an old mansion
occupied by a group of anarchists and marijuana addicts. There was only one type case of Bcrnhard Gothic
available, and Wilson felt the need for some extra type face. It was then he discovered the 'miracle of trade
composition shops' and had some words set in Ultra Bodoni. The paper used was red wrapping paper.
A copy of Printing for Theater has been deposited by Mrs. Beatrice Warde in the St. Bride Printing Library,
Fleet Street, London, where it may be examined.

105

Book Designer,
Printer & Publisher

BY WM. R. ESHELMAN

One of my earliest printing memories is of Adrian Wilson, very big
and very young, bending over the composing stone, and arranging the
letters C-O-M-P-A-S-S in the appropriate semicircle, from which he
intended to print a letterhead for the periodical of that name. It had
been made clear to him why this couldn't be done in our primitive
print shop, but he persisted in his defiance of the composing stick,
poured plaster of Paris to hold the letters in place and when it was dry
locked up his form. It worked.

That was in 1945 in a C.P.S. Camp at Waldport, Oregon, where a
group of writers, artists, musicians and others interested in the arts,
spurred on by the poet William Everson (now Brother Antoninus),
had gathered to learn from each other and produce what they could in
the time left over after their 48-hour work week planting trees for the
U. S. Forest Service's reforestation project. Besides the Compass, their
productions included a literary magazine, The Illiteniti, a number of
books of poetry over the imprint, The Untide Press, plays, chamber
music concerts, paintings and handcrafts. / f

Adrian Wilson is among the notable "alomni" of "The Fine Arts
at Waldport, " and the incident described above captures some of the
qualities which have characterised his success : the placing of design
above technical difficulties ; the search for typographic form to suit the
content ; the experimental and inventive attitude ; and the full exploi
tation of the medium.

In 1946, with his wife, the actress Joyce Lancaster, Adrian kept a

rendezvous with some equally foolhardy and impassioned friends de
termined to establish a repertory theater in San Francisco. The new
group was christened "The Interplayers." Serious and experimental
plays of the Chekhov-Shaw-Lorca variety were chosen for presenta
tion, rehearsals went on in basements, living rooms and recreation
halls, and the resulting performances enlivened the Quaker meeting
house. Meanwhile Adrian was concocting and executing an extraordi
nary series of mailing announcements, posters, tickets and, most i
portant of all, programs to fit the bills. Long an opera town, San
Francisco was suffering a post-war theatrical doldrums, and the gradual
growth of the present much-publicised San Francisco theater renais-

sance must be credited in part to the building of audience at
through the work of Adrian Wilson.

At the outset, Adrian produced these intriguing pieces on a bor
rowed press by arrangement with its owners, a group of anarchists who
acquired it for the occasional issue of a broadside or their literary peri
odical, The Ark. Paper for the programs and announcements was begged
from the scrap and trimming pile of The Grabhorn Press and one or
another of the Interplayers acted as a stand-in for the motor which the
press never had.

In 1947, on the same press, Adrian printed his first book, a volume
of poetry by Hyman Swetzoff, published by Bern Porter, entitled
Ins/ Outs. Concurrently he printed a set of poems for James Broughton
called Songs for Certain Children on colored construction papers, employ
ing old stock cuts and, for the covers, original children's paintings,
commissioned from his wife's nursery school. After working briefly
for a music printer, Adrian joined Jack Stauffacher a/ the Greenwood
Press. Together they produced Eric Gill's And Who Wants Peace? in a
monumental format on handmade paper with Gill's Perpetua type
handset; Mining and Hunting in the Far West, i8jz-i8jo, a Fifty Books
of the Year choice; and The Religion of No-Religion.

When in 1950 The Interplayers acquired its first playhouse, at Hyde
and Beach Streets, Adrian moved a small Challenge Gordon platen
press into the lobby, where the audiences could watch its programs
being printed before curtain time. Soon a Colt's Armory Press sup-
Gordon and a Washington Hand Press was added for his-
mly to give way to a Kelly B Automatic Cylinder Press.
ks were produced in the lobby, ranging from The Coppa
Club of California to The Scholar Dunce for Swet-
en removed as a galleryman and occasional publisher to

Boston; from Picasso, Painter and Engraver for the international
script and book dealer Erwin Rosenthal to collections of verse and
ghost-written ghost stories, issued under the imprint Adrian Wilson,
Printer at the Sign of The Interplayers. At the same time the Univer
sity of California Press began commissioning book designs (an assocfe-
ation which continues to the present) for equally diverse titles such as
Herman Melville, a Biography, one of the Fifty Books of 1952, Napoleon

the Dardenelles, an AIGA Text Book Show selection, and The Self in

chotic Process. Many of these books, when they were printed in the

st, were selected for the Western Books shows.

1954 The Interplayers moved to the old Bella Union Theater on
iy Street and Adrian set up his equipment at 343 Front Street,
e center of the printing district. There he continued printing
, playbills, catalogues etc. and designing books for the Univer
sity of California Press as well as the Stanford University Press. In the
next few years the following books were selected as outstandingly
the juries for the Western Books exhibitions : The Lion of the West and
The Pollen Path (both for Stanford); Electronic Motion Pictures; Mark
Twain of the Enterprise; The Ureterovesical Junction, and the monographs
Morris Graves, Hans Hofmann, and Arthur G. Dove which also served as
the catalogues for the national exhibitions of these painters (all for the
diversity of California Press) ; Bully Waterman (for the Roxburghe
Club); Weldon Kees' Poems 1947-1954, printed and published by
Adrian Wilson ; and finally Printing for Theater, the story of The Inter-
layers programs, written, printed and published by their prrnter.

With Printing for Theater we come to Adrian's original
a mos%-«t>table contribution to the art of book-making. Mr
Glixon, former chairman of the Trade Book Clinic, in coi
the AIGA Fifty Books Show of 1958 (Publishers' Weekly,
1958) had this to say:

My impression is that the current show is the best in recent y<
Nearly half the selections would be outstanding in any company ;
five of them provide that glow of pleasure you get from a great pi<
of acting, a favorite painting — or that almost perfect book.

Here are the five that "send" me: "Printing for Theater", the

gest thing in the show for page size... imagination, and sheer quality...

In both design and production, "Printing for Theater" is a work of
art. While its great size is functional, permitting the inclusion of a
score of tipped-on theatre programs, this volume would retain most of
its beauty even if you cut the format by a third, printed its 64 pages in

just two colors on less costly stock than handmade Tovil, and bound it
in standard cloth instead of in handwoven Belgian linen. ... His bril
liant use of Stempel'sTrajanus display type with Caslon Old Style text
(iS on 22), his unconventional spacing, his impish yet purposeful dis
position of illustrations — they all help to add an authentic and exciting
masterpiece to the roster of American books. (End of rave ; see it for
yourself 1)

The following year the Wilsons and their daughter spent in Europe,
he visiting printers and designers, working with the Cambridge Uni
versity Press, and delving into the typographical history of the play
bill, and Miss Lancaster attending the theater and studying French.
Upon their return to San Francisco, Adrian set up a studio for book
design and sent out an announcement. This promptly brought com
missions from several publishers across the country, among them The
University of Chicago Press whose Greek Sculpture, designed by Adrian,
received the top rating in the Chicago Book Clinic Exhibition this
year, one of four of his designs selected.

A recent choice for the Fifty Books of the Year is Tie Sunset Cook
Book (Lane Book Co.), also chosen for the Western Books show. Two
recent titles of The Limited Editions Club are Adrian Wilson designs ,
The Romance of Tristan and. Iseult, and Conrad's Nostromo. The latter was
printed in San Francisco by Taylor & Taylor (see the insert in the July
1960 California Librarian) and, lamentably, is the last book to be pro
duced by that famous house.

Currently, Adrian's course at the San Francisco Art Institute in
"Design for Books and Printing" is part of the summer session cur
riculum. His studio-printery is involved in the production, for The
Book Club of California, of My First Publication, a compilation of ac
counts by eleven California authors of their first appearances in print,
edited by James D. Hart. The Oresteia of Aeschylus for the Limited
Editions Club is in process at the Press of A. Colish, Mount Vernon,
N. Y., printer of some of Bruce Rogers' most noble volumes. Design
for The Spice Islands Cook Book has just been completed, as well as The
First Century at the University of Washington. Further investigation of the
history of the playbill, French edition deluxe production and the typo
graphical conference at Lurs, in southern France, will probably take
Adrian Wilson abroad again in the summer of 1962. The exchange of
ideas, stimuli and methods in the world of book-making on the inter
national level has become a major concern. We await with anticipation
the books which will result.

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